Haunted
by dysprositos
Summary: Some ghosts, Clint is learning, will not be put to rest. And you never know when they're going to come for you. When Loki comes back, Clint is in no way prepared to deal with him. But he's not going to let something like that stop him. Sequel to "Four Days." On hiatus indefinitely.
1. Sisyphean

Hi! So, apparently when I say "I'll write the sequel in a month," I actually mean, "I will write the sequel in two and a half weeks." Whoops.

Anyway, this is the sequel to "Four Days." Which you should probably read before you read this, if you haven't.

Warnings: language.

My beta, irite, is the best for putting up with my endless neurosis and tendency to write...a lot.

I do not own The Avengers.

* * *

**Haunted: (adj)**

**1. inhabited or frequented by ghosts: _a haunted castle._**  
**2. preoccupied, as with an emotion, memory, or idea; obsessed: _His haunted imagination gave him no peace._**  
**3. disturbed; distressed; worried: _Haunted by doubt, he again turned to law books on the subject._**

* * *

"Do you really think this is necessary?"

Natasha just rolled her eyes. They'd had this exact exchange every two weeks for the last three months. "Yes, I do. Now get your shit together so we can get this over with."

Clint gave an irritated huff. The twice-a-month doctor's appointments were, he thought, the most fucking annoying thing that had ever happened to him. Or maybe that was the twice-a-week therapy sessions. Which were better than the five-times-a-week therapy sessions had been (and thank God he'd graduated down, because that much therapy was driving him insane), but not by much. So those probably won for 'most fucking annoying thing ever.'

Still, the doctor's appointments were pretty high on the list. "I feel _fine_."

"Tell that to Styer."

That was Clint's doctor. Well, one of them. Clint had three, at the moment. Four, if you counted the nutritionist. Anyway, Styer wasn't a bad guy, but it was the _principle _of the thing. "Aren't doctors for sick people?"

"How're the headaches? Any panic attacks in the last two weeks? And you're still underweight."

Okay, he probably had that coming. Still, in Clint's opinion, kind of a low blow. "Awful, you already know that's a 'yes,' and hardly, Nat. Come on, gimme a break."

She wouldn't, though (and he depended on her not to, he _needed _her to be a hardass and she knew it) so, within the hour, he found himself on an exam table, trying not to flip out while Dr. Styer did his thing.

Which mostly, as far as Clint could tell, involved a lot of poking, prodding, and asking obvious questions.

"How're the headaches?"

Clint wished people would stop asking him that. "They're fine."

Styer leveled him with a look that clearly said, 'why do you even bother trying to lie to me.' If he didn't know better, Clint would swear the man was related to Fury. He tried again, "Okay, they're fucking miserable, I thought you said they'd get better—"

"I said if you tried to stay stress-free, they would. Have you been avoiding stress, staying calm?"

Well, truth be told, Clint hadn't been. His reinstatement meeting with Director Fury was approaching with a speed that seemed to defy the laws of time, and the prospect of that was pretty fucking stressful. Because even though the director had said that he wasn't going to fire Clint, that had been over three months ago. Almost four months ago, in fact. And four months was a long time to think. To reconsider. To make what Clint thought was a more rational choice. Because Clint didn't think that in Fury's position, he would keep himself on. And that fucking sucked to admit to himself.

Clint _had_ been making an effort at de-stressing, though. He knew how important it was to try and avoid stress. For one, it exacerbated the headaches that his amphetamine habit, even three months after he'd stopped using, had gifted him with. Second, it exacerbated his anxiety that, even over than six months after the fact, Loki had gifted him with. Third, it made the cravings worse, and that, probably, was the hardest one to deal with. Because, despite the fact that he'd stopped using over three months ago, the _need _was still there. He still wanted the drugs, his drugs. And he knew he couldn't have them, but 'mind over matter' wasn't quite seeming to work here.

So, Clint _was_ trying to avoid stress. _Really_. He'd picked up some meditation techniques from Banner (and good lord did that man have a lot of advice about staying calm), spent a lot of time at the range, the gym, and sometimes, when he'd had a particularly bad day, Tony would let him blow shit up in one of the ballistics labs. Quite often, the billionaire would join in—he pretended it was for research, but Clint wasn't fooled. Tony just liked explosions.

All of that had been pretty helpful, but as he got closer and closer to the meeting, the stress had been getting worse. Hence the upswing in headaches.

And in panic attacks. "Two in the last two weeks," Clint answered, when Styer asked about them. Clint saw the doctor make a note on his chart, and he knew that he'd be re-visiting the topic with his psychiatrist in a little while. To Clint, two panic attacks in two weeks didn't seem that bad—three months ago, he'd been having three or four a day, and _that _had been pretty hard to deal with. By comparison, two in two weeks was a fucking vacation. And neither of those had even involved vomiting, so that was an extra nice change.

Dr. Williamson, his psychiatrist, didn't feel the same way. "The ultimate goal," she'd said, quite often, "is that you don't have any attacks at all."

A nice goal, but it seemed pretty lofty.

After a few more tests, Styer sent Clint on to his next appointment, after reminding him, "Don't forget to schedule a follow-up for two weeks from now."

Like Clint could possibly forget.

Natasha was in the waiting room, and together they made their way over to PPS—Psychiatric and Psychological Services. This part of the building Clint was very familiar with, having visited it five times a week for two months, and then twice a week for the last month. It was home to, as the name of the department implied, his psychiatrist and psychologist.

The psychiatrist was first, and Clint left Natasha in the waiting room and wandered down to room 399.

As he walked, he remembered the first time he'd come here—strung out, in the middle of withdrawal, nearly incapable of restraining himself from lashing out. He'd been completely out of control, having some kind of mental breakdown, unable to refrain from falling to pieces at the slightest provocation. He'd barely even made it into Williamson's office before he'd come apart.

Comparatively, he knew he was in a better place now. Even if he wasn't where he wanted to be (because where he wanted to be was _not coming here anymore_), he couldn't deny the definite progress that he'd made.

_For example_, he thought, entering her office and shutting the door behind him, _I made it into the office_, _and there's no panic in sight._

A small achievement, but an achievement nonetheless; it had taken him almost a month before he could traverse these halls without falling victim to the 'I'm-a-fucking-failure' panic spiral.

His chat with Dr. Williamson was mercifully brief. She was, of course, interested in the panic attacks, and they discussed possible changes to Clint's medication (he was steadfastly anti-benzodiazepine, but took an SSRI for anxiety; it had been the first compromise of many). Clint was more-or-less happy with the current regime, though (read: unwilling to deviate from the status quo) so they shelved that discussion for the moment.

Instead, Williamson asked, "Have you been experiencing any symptoms of depression?"

Which Clint found ridiculous, because he was on an antidepressant for God's sake. But Williamson asked this every time they met, which Clint suspected had something to do with the fact that, at one point, he had tried to throw himself off the roof of Stark Tower. That particular urge had not struck him since, but he'd be lying if he said that (especially in first weeks after he'd stopped using) the thought hadn't been there. Williamson knew this; it was something they discussed at length, so Clint just shrugged. "Not really. Things have been...good."

Williamson nodded and, after a few more minutes of back and forth, sent Clint on his way. With a reminder to "schedule a follow-up for two weeks from today."

Clint wondered when it would stop being every two weeks, and start being once a month.

His last stop of the day was also his least favorite. Clint had once had something of a moral opposition to therapy, did not see what use could possibly come from laying his thoughts and feelings out for someone else to peruse. It seemed like he was making himself dangerously vulnerable, and it had taken him the better part of two months to get comfortable enough to do more than answer in monosyllables and blank looks.

Although, Clint had to admit, seeing his shrink wasn't nearly as bad as he thought it would be, and had, in fact, been really fucking useful.

'Sam,' as she preferred to be called ("Because let's just save that 'doctor' stuff for the people who went to med school, 'kay?") had to have some kind of astronomically high security clearance, because she knew exactly who Clint was and what had happened to him during the whole Loki thing ("Alien mind-rape," she'd called it, and not having to dance around the issue using words like 'brainwashing' and 'reconditioning' had been more of a relief than Clint ever could have imagined).

At first, she'd grated on his nerves (but then, at that point, just about everything had) and seeing her five times a week had very nearly been his undoing, but she hadn't seemed to mind much when he'd thrown a chair out a window (during appointment number ten), and once he'd calmed down enough to listen to her advice to "stop worrying about how you _should_ be feeling and start accepting how you _are _feeling," he'd actually started to make some progress.

Even if he _did _feel ridiculous most of the time.

Today, Clint knew, they were picking up where they'd left off during their last session, which was working through "what to do when using drugs seems like a really, really good idea."

"Keep in mind," Sam had advised, "That no matter what you think, it's not. It never is. Because it's not going to solve any of your problems and really, it's not even going to make you feel better. It'll just be easier if you don't."

Easier said than done, Clint thought, but he also knew that she was right. As annoying as that was.

When he got there, though, Sam had a different plan. "I was thinking we could try to work through some of your control issues today."

This was something that they had attempted only twice previously—and one of those had been the chair-through-the-window incident. Most of their work had centered around addiction recovery, and at the idea of tackling something else, Clint immediately felt his stomach twist with anxiety. "I don't know..."

Because his control issues were epic, with red and white flashing lights. They were a huge, gaping sore right in the middle of his psyche that he knew he _had_ to face but didn't know if he _could_.

There were three things that, in three months, they had discovered that Clint absolutely could not stand. One was surprises. He didn't like not knowing what was coming, because he needed to be able to control a situation, and he couldn't do that if he didn't know what was going to happen. The second was being told what to do, especially if there was an element of coercion. That brought back far too many memories of being unable to act on his own free will, brought back memories of having his own will stolen from him, of having his body become someone else's to toy with. The third thing was, unfortunately, being forced to decide his own course of action. Because, after what he had done, after the people he had killed, he did not trust himself to take action, did not trust that he could control himself and _not _do those things that had become so easy to accomplish with Loki behind the wheel.

Although he hadn't been aware of it at the time, all three of these issues had come into play three months ago, when a crazy Russian and his SHIELD-scientist accomplice had decided to destroy a small town. The whole thing had been an elaborate plan (probably, although not provably, orchestrated by Loki for his own nefarious purposes) designed to expose the Avengers as useless, dangerous, or both. Clint, in the middle of withdrawal, had gotten tangled up in the whole thing, despite being ordered off-duty. And when push came to shove, he _hadn't _been able to handle it, had snapped, had lost control. He'd ended up shooting the Russian in a haze of unthinking rage. And everyone said it was justified, because the man had shot Natasha, but he just couldn't see it. Or wouldn't.

On the plus side, his loss of control had proved that the drugs weren't solving his problems, weren't making anything better, weren't giving him the control that he desperately needed. It had been the push that Clint needed.

So, the control issues were at the center of his problems, yeah, but that didn't mean he was ready to go there.

And he resented the hell out of the fact she'd just sprung it on him. Because surprises were _really _not his thing, as his rising temper stood testament to.

"Hear me out," she said, correctly interpreting the stormy look on Clint's face. "This is something you need to address before your meeting with Director Fury in two weeks—"

"I know that."

She changed tactics. "Look, you can get through this. It's not insurmountable. You thought your fear of sleeping was going to be too much to tackle, and we worked through that in a month—"

"I have an entire team of superheroes on call while I'm sleeping—"

"Are they in the room with you?"

"No, but—"

"That's progress, Clint. Trust me. I'm not going to force you to do anything. I don't think I could." Clint found that oddly comforting, the same as he did every time she said it. "Just listen to what I have in mind and we can work from there. Okay?"

And that was one of the things that Clint hated about her, how she always sounded so _rational_ and _logical_ about everything (_Because she _is, _Barton_) so that listening to her seemed like the rational, logical path to follow (_Because it is_). He heaved a sigh, before conceding. "Fine. What are you thinking?"

* * *

An hour later, Clint stalked out of his shrink's office and back towards where Natasha was waiting. She took one look at him and stood from where she'd been sitting, perusing the latest issue of Star (Tony was on the cover. Again) with a half-bemused, half-horrified look on her face. Straightening, she said, "Bad one, hey?"

Clint didn't dignify that with a response, instead making his way to the elevator. With a sigh, Natasha followed him.

Over three months in, and she still wasn't entirely sure how she'd landed this gig. Really, some of it was still pretty baffling. The part where she'd stumbled onto Clint's drug habit, the part where he'd trusted her enough to ask for her help—those parts, she understood. That's just what partners and friends did for each other (although Clint's concepts of 'partner,' 'friend,' and 'trust' had been so fucked up that point that letting her in had been torture for him).

The part where SHIELD was essentially paying her to babysit him, though, she found a little odd. Fury had called it 'asset retention,' and explained it to Natasha as follows: "Look, Romanoff, someone needs to keep a fucking eye on him. Make sure he gets from point A to point B. Keep him on damn track, that sort of shit."

And she, of course, had been doing that for several days at that point, and would have continued doing it indefinitely and without compensation because, well, she'd signed on for this, and she didn't just quit in the middle of things, especially not when there was so much at stake. She suspected that Fury knew that, and had relieved her of her other duties to make it easier. After all, Fury had a lot invested in the pair of them, and overworking one to keep the other wasn't the best way to maintain that investment.

The director could be a manipulative asshole, yeah, but Natasha could deal with that, as long as they were on the same page.

After almost four months, though, Natasha couldn't deny that she was more than ready to get back into a more active role within SHIELD. Sure, she'd been doing some work with the Avengers, but they were kind of a specialized team, and they'd only been called out once in the time since she'd been pulled from active duty with SHIELD. Staying in one place for an extended period and doing nothing that could be traditionally considered dangerous (although Clint was still sometimes so volatile that something as mundane as lunch could turn dangerous pretty quickly) was frankly, boring.

Natasha knew Clint felt the same way, was practically going stir crazy from the boredom, and knew that made his impending meeting with Fury all the more stressful. It was something they'd only talked about once or twice, but Natasha knew that Clint harbored an unappeasable fear that he _wouldn't _be reinstated, that he'd be left to wander aimlessly, living on charity, rendered essentially worthless.

It was completely irrational, of course, but it was just one of the many irrationalities that Natasha had come to accept, and she knew Clint was at least trying to work through some of it.

The elevator ride to the ground floor was silent, and this was another thing that Natasha had come to accept. She'd expected the moodiness would fade once Clint had finished going through amphetamine withdrawal. And, well, a lot of it had. The dramatic mood swings had mostly stopped, and he wasn't quite as prone to throwing things, but he wasn't back to 'normal' yet, and she wondered if he ever would be. Pre-Loki Clint (and she hated to think of him that way, but that was the division that her mind had constructed) had been easy going, laid back, and prone to sarcastic humor. Compared to how tense he was now, and how generally humorless he'd become (except for the truly cutting self-deprecating humor she was trying to break him of), she couldn't help but feel...like he'd lost something.

Really, they both had.

Back at the car, Natasha tried again. Rule number one, she'd learned (consulting with every. single. one. of Clint's doctors) was 'don't let him think too much.' Left to his own devices, he'd clam up, work himself into some kind of self-flagellating fury, and stew in it. Better to get him talking. "Rough appointment, hey?"

In response, he pointedly turned his head and looked out the window.

Natasha sighed. Well, he'd talk or he wouldn't. Today seemed like it was going to be a 'wouldn't' day. Onto the next strategy, then. Rule number two was, 'distractions are key," so she said, "Stark said you guys were in the ballistics lab again last night. Blow up anything good?"

There were a few seconds of silence, then Clint smirked. "Well, Thor apparently discovered Wal-Mart."

"Oh, God." This was going to be good.

"They've apparently got an entire section of Avengers merchandise, can you believe it? Us _and _the bad guys. Anyway, he bought like every action figure they have. I guess he was feeling generous or something, because he gave me a whole fucking pile of them, so, um, Stark rigged up the Iron Man ones so that the repulsors were actually functional and we blew the shit out of the Loki ones." He shrugged. "Stark got some ideas for some pretty fucking cool toys out of it. Nothing I'd let my kids have, but it looks promising, I guess."

The image of Clint and Tony lying on the floor of the lab, playing with action figures, struck Natasha as pretty damn amusing, and she snorted a laugh. "Doesn't Stark Industries already have a toy division?"

Clint nodded. "I think so, but it's not something Stark himself has spent much time with. I think that's gonna change, though, he seemed pretty into it."

For most of the rest of the drive, they discussed the possible lawsuits associated with letting Tony Stark design toys.

By the time Natasha pulled into the Tower's underground parking garage, though, they'd lapsed back into silence. And she'd barely put the car in park before Clint had wordlessly slipped away, off to do whatever it was he was going to do.

She sighed.

* * *

The thing that really pissed him off (as if was only one thing, but it was _the _thing pissing him off right now) was that he kept finding new shit underneath all the old shit.

And they'd walked into a nice, big pile of it today.

Clint didn't think it was fair, that he could make so much 'progress,' only to find a new layer of detritus under the one he'd just finished cleaning up. He felt like Sisyphus, sometimes, like he was never, ever going to complete this, never going to be done. He was just damned to keep working at it for the rest of his life.

And, well, he kind of was. "Always recovering, never recovered" was what they said about drug addiction. There was never going to be a point in his life where he _wasn't _carrying this with him, never going to be a point where he could set it down. It wasn't fair, and it sucked, but it was something that he was working on accepting.

With his efforts on that, there was a whole slew of other things he hadn't quite gotten around to accepting.

Sam's proposition had been simple enough, but Clint was already on edge because she'd sprung this change of plans on him, and he hated surprises. Which he _knew _she knew, and that didn't really help things either.

"I want you to tell me," she said, "what you would have done differently if you _had_ been in control of yourself. If Loki hadn't used magic, hadn't put you in the passenger's seat. What would _you _have done, if you'd still had control of your body?"

His response had been immediate, of course. "I would've put a bullet in his fucking skull, that's what—"

But she cut him off. "Do you really think that would have stopped him?"

And that's where Clint started to get angry.

He knew what point she was trying to make, at least, he thought he did. Probably something about, 'there's only so much you could have done' or 'being rendered completely fucking helpless isn't that different from being rendered only a little bit fucking helpless' or _something _like that, but it wasn't something he was ready to tackle. Not yet.

Because underneath the issues of how much it sucked being rendered completely fucking helpless was something else that Clint wasn't in any way, shape, or form ready to face—the guilt that he _should_ have done something, or _could have _done something differently that might have made a difference. Sure, he hadn't been able to control himself, but even if he had, he couldn't have done shit, right?

In her defense, his shrink registered where Clint was heading pretty damn fast, but the damage was already done. She spent most of the rest of the session apologizing for pushing too hard (which Clint ignored in stony silence) before finishing up with his assignment for the weekend. "I want you to think about what it means to have control. And what it means to lose it."

This, Clint thought, was a ridiculous assignment. Like he wasn't thinking about that _constantly_.

But she kept going, "And when you've got a handle on that, I want you to think of one possible way to give up some kind of control in your life. I don't want you to actually do it. But think about it, and then think about the best and worst-case scenarios that could result from that."

Clint stood. "Sure."

He had no intention at all of doing it.

Which wasn't actually all that common—for almost four months, he'd been pretty good about participating, about working towards his own recovery. He knew a lot of it hinged on him, on how much _he _was willing to work.

But this wasn't something he was willing to work on.

The ride back to the Tower was...passable. Nat clearly wanted him to open up, but he'd had about enough of that shit for the day. Instead, they talked about what a horrible idea it was for Stark to design products for children; as Natasha put it, "That man has no concept of safety."

Clint ditched her as soon as they were back at the Tower. It wasn't anything _personal_. His current temperament was lending itself more towards 'kick the shit out of something' than 'engage in polite conversation,' and he tried not to be a dick to Nat. He knew how much of her life he'd put on hold for him, knew that she'd sacrificed a lot to be there for him. Even if he _was _her current 'assignment' (and oh how awkward he'd felt about that, how awkward he _still_ felt about it, if he thought about it too long) he knew this wasn't something she had to do. She could have said 'no,' could have gone on with her life, but she _didn't_. And he didn't repay monumental shit like that by being an asshole. At least if he could help it. Which, these days, he more-or-less could.

More-or-less.

So Clint made his way down to the gym, thinking vaguely of taking on one of Rogers's 100-lb punching bags. Because the man had to have a couple dozen of them (Stark kept replenishing them, because Rogers wouldn't let him replace them with something 'better'), and it wasn't like Clint was going to be able to explode them like the supersoldier did.

He was in luck, though. Instead of finding Steve's punching bag, Clint found Steve himself, apparently just beginning his workout, if his non-sweaty appearance was anything to go by.

_Even better_, Clint thought. Out loud, he said, "Don't suppose you're looking for a sparring partner."

As a matter of fact, Steve wasn't. But, taking in the archer's clearly agitated appearance (Steve hadn't seen him doing the slow fist-clenching thing very often since Clint had gotten clean), he reconsidered. When it became apparent that they were all going to be a part of this, the whole team had gotten the rundown on 'how to deal with the recovering drug addict.' Which included tips about how to help manage stress levels and the like. So, after a moment of consideration, Steve replied, "Sure. You wanna change?"

"Yeah, gimme a sec."

When Clint came back, Steve had cleared a large area in the middle of floor. "Thought you might like to have a little more room."

Clint appreciated the gesture; he tended to really put the 'mixed' into 'mixed martial arts' and liked having a little more room to spread out.

They sparred for a little less than an hour, at the end of which time Clint had thoroughly exhausted his desire to 'smash.' Even Steve was feeling it, Clint's superior training more than making up for Steve's superior strength. "Ready to call it?" Steve asked, a little bit out of breath.

"Yeah. Hey, thanks—"

Steve waved him off. "Don't thank me. I should thank you. Geez, I need lessons or something..."

They rode the elevator back up to the Avengers' floor together before going their separate ways for showers.

Standing under the water was, as always, calming, and combined with the endorphin rush from his workout, Clint was relaxed enough that he was able to think more carefully about what he was supposed to work on over the weekend.

But doing so made a spike of anxiety shoot through his gut, and instead he thought, _Why would I want to think about that, when I was so nice and calm and _not _thinking about it_?

So he dismissed it from his mind, thrilled to be at a place in his life where he could actually do that. Even as a small, almost-inaudible corner of his mind worried that repression was a step in the wrong direction.

* * *

Thank you for coming to the party!

You know what I like? Reviews. Aw, hell, you know that already. What you don't know is that I'm turning over a new leaf in terms of actually _replying_ to reviews, and I'd love the opportunity to practice being less, um, awkward. So, yeah. Let me know what you think. If you don't, I'll be sad, and I'll probably never write anything again. Ever.


	2. Credit Where It's Due

Warnings: language.

Thanks, as always, to my amazing beta, irite, without whom I would probably suffer massive concussion and possible death from banging my head against my computer monitor in despair and frustration.

I do not own The Avengers.

* * *

The next week and a half was entirely uneventful, at least until the shit hit the fan.

After his sparring session with Steve on Friday, Clint spent most of the rest of his weekend sprawled on the couch in front of the television, watching a marathon of NCIS on USA. His level of inactivity surprised even himself. To everyone else, it was nothing short of bizarre. Because Clint hadn't been particularly interested in rest and quietude, well, ever, but it had definitely been something he'd been actively avoiding for months. He'd been seeking distractions, not time for reflection, after all.

Conveniently, though, Clint wasn't using his down time for reflecting. In fact, he wasn't really thinking at all. Instead, he put a lot of effort into _not_ thinking, into pointedly ignoring every single thing that stabbed at his core, at that vulnerable, soft place that he was not yet willing to face. And at the end of two days, Clint decided that it had _probably _been the best weekend he'd had in months.

Given that, he was pretty unimpressed with the idea of ruining it come Monday morning.

But Natasha was a hardass and didn't buy his "I'm really not feeling well" excuse for a second. She dragged him back to SHIELD, and at 9:30 AM precisely he was back in his shrink's office.

"How was your weekend?" Sam asked him.

That was safe enough. "Good. I watched twenty-four episodes of NCIS." Clint was surprised to hear something approximating cheer in his voice. Funny what a weekend of 'vacation' could do for one's morale.

Sam looked equally surprised at Clint's tone. "Yeah, I caught the end of that marathon." She paused. "Did you think at all about what we discussed on Friday?"

"Nope," Clint answered truthfully.

"I kind of figured you wouldn't. But I had to test a theory."

"What the fuck's that supposed to mean?" The shift in his demeanor was abrupt.

She shrugged. "Addicts tend to avoid the things that make them uncomfortable. It's kind of their M.O. I wanted to see if you were ready to get past that behavior."

Clint still _really _hated that word, and he hated that she'd seen through him, through his new tactic, in less than five minutes. He glared at her. "I guess you've got me all figured out."

"I wouldn't say that. But I've seen this sort of thing enough to have a pretty good idea what's going on."

And that echoed something that Banner had said once, about how people tended to react to things in really similar ways. But where that had been almost comforting (because who doesn't want to hear that they're not a complete freak?) this grated on his nerves. Because maybe she'd seen 'this sort of thing' before, but she'd certainly never seen _this_ before. Never seen _him _before.

Clint didn't say anything, though, opting instead for the stormy silence to which he usually retreated in lieu of giving voice to whatever rude, asshole-ish comment was on the tip of his tongue. He set his jaw and crossed his arms across his chest, making eye contact with the floor.

After a moment of this, Sam added something to her notes before looking up and smiling at him. "So, how're the cravings?"

The rest of the session was back on the safe turf of what Clint referred to as "addiction shit," for which he was more than thankful. Talking about the other stuff still made him feel like he was falling off a cliff, or like he was being driven off one. It left him grasping at the threads of the control he'd lost, wondering if he'd ever get it back and despairing that he wouldn't.

All in all, a road he wasn't willing to go down. Not yet. Even if he _was _acting like a fucking 'addict.'

At the end of their session, Sam cancelled Clint's Friday appointment, since she was going to be in Florida for a conference. The prospect of not having to show up at medical for a whole seven days was so amazing to Clint that his earlier good mood was entirely restored, and he practically bounced out of her office and down to the car.

"Geez, what's up with you?" Natasha asked, taking in his buoyant demeanor. He wasn't usually this...cheery.

"I've got the next week off," he told her, fiddling with the radio. "Sam's got some conference in Florida this weekend, so I'm free 'til next Monday." He settled on a pop station, tapping the beat of the current song on his thighs enthusiastically. After a moment, he began to hum along.

Natasha shot him a sideways glance. "Are you feeling okay?"

"What? Yeah, I'm fine." The song ended and a new one began. Clint, with a look of sheer delight on his face, turned the radio up, and yelled over the music, "This one always makes me think of Rogers."

"'Firework?'" Natasha yelled back with a raised eyebrow. "I'm not sure Rogers would appreciate you associating him with Katy Perry."

Clint shrugged. "Can't help it, Nat, it's just where my mind goes. You should hear what I've got for Stark. And for some reason, Lady Gaga _always _makes me think of Banner."

And frankly, dealing with a cheerful, pop-culture obsessed Clint was immeasurably better than dealing with an anxious, depressed, drug-addicted Clint, so Natasha felt her spirits lifting to match his. "Okay, now that one I can't even fathom."

He spent the rest of the ride explaining in agonizing detail why "Born This Way" _had _to be Dr. Banner's theme song.

Clint's good mood held up until Friday. His meeting with Fury was scheduled for the following Friday, and the gravity of the situation struck him abruptly, as it had done every now and then for the last three months. One minute he was sitting in the kitchen, surrounded by the others (except Thor, who'd headed home for a few days to get the latest news) and eating shchi (he wasn't a fan of Russian food in general, but he made an exception for the soup). Then, he pulled out his phone to check the calendar, and the next minute he was bent over with his head between his knees, gasping for air, with Natasha crouched in front of him making a valiant attempt at being soothing.

"How long?" Clint asked the room at large once he'd caught his breath.

"Fifteen minutes," Tony called from where he was digging through the fridge.

Clint sighed. This had happened often enough that no one really freaked out about it anymore, but he still found it humiliating. So he was pliant as Natasha led him to his room to have the 'you're not going to be fired and left to beg on the streets' talk in private.

She got through almost the whole thing before he interrupted. "But what if—"

"You're not going to be fired, Barton."

He looked at the floor. "Maybe I should be. If this keeps happening..."

Natasha sighed. "If this keeps happening, we'll keep dealing with it." She didn't add a meaningless platitude, or try to assure him that this wasn't a big deal—platitudes never worked with him, and it _was _a big deal. An assassin who had panic attacks three or four times a month was a huge potential liability, something that they both knew.

Frustrated, Clint stood. "I just don't...I can't expect people to keep _waiting _for me to figure this shit out—"

"Why not?"

Clint's eyebrows shot up. "What do you mean, 'why not?' Nat—"

"Look," she interrupted him. "If you were injured on a mission and had to recuperate for months, would you be worried about being fired? Would you try to head back into the field while you were still healing?"

"I'm not hurt, though. This is different."

She gave an irritated sigh. "No, it's not. Fury doesn't see it that way. I don't. No one does. Take the time you need and just get better. And if next week, Fury says you're still not ready? That doesn't mean you'll _never _be ready, and it doesn't mean he thinks that. You're going to be ready, and you're worth waiting for until you are. We all know it. Okay?"

Clint wasn't stupid enough to argue with that tone. He sighed. "Okay. Fine." He met her eyes. "Can I get some privacy?" He wanted some time to think, to process, to indulge his irrational worry without an audience.

She considered before acquiescing. "Sure. Let me know if you need anything, though."

Left alone, Clint managed to avoid lapsing into full-out panic, but his worries were not assuaged. And after almost a full week with no incidents, no worries, nothing, he was more angry than anything. _Can't even do denial and avoidance right, can you? Christ, Barton._

But then, maybe that was a good thing.

That weekend, USA was showing House instead of NCIS, and Clint found that less interesting. Still, he managed to sit through almost two days of it, taking the time to think, actually think, about what Natasha had said. It struck him as completely unbelievable, at first, but by the time Sunday night rolled around, he'd at least accepted that he hadn't been kicked to the curb yet (and his last 'mission' with SHIELD certainly would have been ample justification for his dismissal), so maybe Nat was onto something.

And so by Monday morning, he was almost happy to head to his appointment. After all, it was almost the last one before his reinstatement meeting, and thus his last opportunity to get Sam to sign off on what she needed to sign off on for him to get back to work. Towards that end, he wanted to tell her what Nat had told him about mental and physical illness being comparable, and how that had started to lessen his anxiety.

Natasha dropped him off at the door, and Clint made his way upstairs. Outside Sam's office, he stopped and knocked quickly before turning the doorknob.

It was locked.

Which was weird. Because it was 9:30 AM, and he definitely wasn't the first appointment of the day. He'd gotten there early enough a few times that he'd seen the first appointment of the day leaving at 9:15.

Clint knocked again, but there was still no answer. With a shrug, he went down to the reception area. "Hey, can you tell me if Dr. Paquette is in today?"

"Let me check." The receptionist looked through some papers. "She hasn't called in..."

One of the other receptionists turned around from where she was making a copy at a nearby copier. "You looking for Sam?"

Clint nodded.

"Yeah, she missed her first appointment. The guy stuck around 'til 8:45. She's still not here?"

"I don't think so," Clint answered tersely. This conversation wasn't exactly doing a lot for his nerves—he liked to get in and out of here as fast as possible, and chatting with the office staff was making him feel awkward and antsy.

"You can have a seat if you want," the first receptionist said, gesturing to the waiting area. "Or you can go, and we can have her call and reschedule when she gets in. She's probably stuck in traffic or something."

"That'll work," Clint muttered. "Thanks." He slunk towards the elevator.

Natasha wasn't in the car, and it occurred to Clint that she probably did _other_ stuff while he was at his appointments. Other _work_ stuff. He cast an uneasy glance towards the office complex. Then he shrugged. _It's not like they banned you from the premises, Barton. You can go in_.

He didn't have keys for the car, so it was either that or stand beside the vehicle for the next hour. Or, Clint supposed, he could call Natasha and say he was ready to go early. But maybe whatever she was doing was important. Couldn't be interrupted. Since she was still an active agent and all. Kind of.

He could entertain himself for an hour. No problem. This would be fine.

Setting his shoulders, Clint strode towards the main doors.

And stopped abruptly outside. Because, for some reason, going in before his meeting on Friday felt wrong, like he was cheating. And maybe he hadn't been _banned _from the premises, but Fury's message had definitely been 'go home and stay there until you're better.' Clint didn't want to press his luck.

He sighed and pulled out his cell phone. "Hey, Nat. Sam's sick or something today..."

* * *

Obscenely early Tuesday morning, Clint's phone rang. He felt around on his bedside table for it blindly before cracking his eyes open. By the time he got it in his hands, it had gone silent.

Before he could check and see who the missed call was from, it began to ring again.

It was Fury.

Clint's mind formed half-coherent thoughts about having missed his Friday meeting. _What the fuck day is it? I thought it was Tuesday_... he thought vaguely before remembering that he still had to answer the phone. "Hello?"

"Barton." Fury sounded businesslike as always. Clint cast a quick glance at his clock—it was just after 5:00 AM. _What the hell_? "Sorry if I woke you." He didn't sound sorry at all.

"What's up?" Clint managed, stifling a yawn.

"I was wondering if we could push our meeting up."

Clint sat up, stretching. "Sure. Of course, sir." Because, if he thought about it, it hadn't really been a question. And Clint wasn't going to say 'no.' Not to Fury. Not knowing what this meeting was going to be about. "Um, when?"

"ASAP, Barton. I already let Romanoff know what's going on; she'll be ready to go."

"What _is _going on?"

"I'll tell you when you get here." The director hung up. Clint looked at the phone in his hand for several seconds, dazed, before standing and making his way to the shower.

This was unexpected, and Clint _didn't _like surprises. He didn't like not knowing what he was heading into, not knowing if this was something he could control. And that unease was battling it out with his curiosity, so that by the time he was out of the shower and dressed half an hour later, he was edgy.

He exited his room and found Natasha in the kitchen. She wordlessly offered him a cup of coffee (which he took gratefully) and some toast (which he set indifferently to the side).

"You should eat," she advised, sounding reproachful.

Clint glared at her. "What's going on? What's with the early morning wakeup call?"

Natasha shook her head. "Just eat, Clint. Fury doesn't want to—"

Clint slammed his coffee cup on the counter, sloshing coffee everywhere. "Fuck what Fury wants, Nat, I can't—"

"Clint," she started, seeing the edge of panic in his eyes, "I'm not one-hundred percent sure what's going on. I do know Fury wants to tell you in person. The faster we get there, the faster you'll know."

Her bribery worked. Clint picked up the toast and ate it in about five bites. "Great. Good. Let's go."

SHIELD's headquarters were mostly dark, with only a few lights visible on the upper floors. The doors were still locked for the night, so Natasha swiped her ID card to let them in. Crossing the threshold of the building, Clint couldn't help the spike of anxiety that shot through his gut. Whatever else was going on, he was about to find out if he was back on duty or benched indefinitely. Or permanently. He hadn't been expecting this, hadn't been able to work up to the level of panic that he felt this occasion deserved. And maybe that was a good thing, but Clint felt like he was walking in blind.

Which he technically was. This whole thing was a surprise, and that didn't sit well, no, it really just added to the nerves that _being here _had ignited. Clint slowed to a halt and looked over at Natasha. "Nat."

She stopped. "What?"

"Do you think this is safe?" It was blunt, but it got at the heart of the issue. He didn't know what was going to happen, and he needed reassurance that this—the improvising, the suddenness—wasn't something to be afraid of. That this was normal, at least, normal enough that the apprehension curling throughout his body was unnecessary. He needed to know that he could stay on top of this.

Natasha looked momentarily impatient, then sighed. "Yes, I'm sure this is fine. Whatever's going to happen, it's nothing to be worried about."

Clint nodded, but did not move. "Okay." He looked down the hall towards the elevator and said again, "Okay."

He let her pull him to the elevator. They rode up to Fury's office. The reception area was empty, so Natasha walked right up to the director's door and knocked.

"Come in," Fury called from inside.

Natasha led Clint into the office. Fury was seated at his desk, staring down at a file in front of him. He gestured towards the chairs in front of the desk. "Sit."

They did.

After a moment, Fury looked up, taking in Clint's appearance. "You look better, Barton." And it was true; the last time Clint had been in Fury's office, he'd been in bad shape. Between the amphetamine withdrawal, the injuries, and Clint's inability to go more than a few hours without a panic attack, he'd ended up looking pretty rough by the end of the 'mission' that had brought him there.

"Thank you, sir," Clint said, trying to sound like he _wasn't _intensely worried about what was going on. He met the director's gaze evenly until Fury shifted his eye to Natasha.

"Agent Romanoff," he greeted her. She nodded back.

"I know we were supposed to meet later in the week," Fury started, cutting to the chase, "But I think it's prudent to move this meeting up. I have," he shuffled through the file in front of him, "the most recent reports from Agent Barton's recovery team." He met Clint's eyes again. "I must confess, I have some concerns."

Clint, to his credit, did not wince. He just said, "Sir?" in a neutral tone.

"From a purely medical standpoint, things seem to be satisfactory. You are completely free of the drugs, and Dr. Styer has cleared you for duty. Dr. Williamson notes that you seem to be getting a handle on your anxiety; she recommends that you stick to light duty only for the next couple of months, until we see how that's going to play out."

Fury paused, and Clint nodded, waiting for him to continue.

"Dr. Paquette, though, has expressed the opinion that you are _not_ ready to return to _any _kind of duty. She says that, 'success regarding the hypnophobia notwithstanding,' you're 'avoiding dealing with key issues,' and that makes you 'a prime candidate for relapse.' In fact, she says that 'anything could be a trigger' because you don't know that 'coping mechanisms aren't going to help until you know what you need to cope with.'" Fury raised an eyebrow. "You see where my concerns lie?"

Well, yeah. But Clint was dumbfounded—Sam's assessment was awfully harsh. "She really wrote that?" He knew he'd been struggling with some things, but he thought he'd made a lot of progress dealing with his 'issues.' Hearing it laid out like that, in a way that emphasized exactly how far he still had to go, sucked. Royally.

"Yeah, Barton, she did."

Fury didn't offer to let Clint see the report, for which the archer was oddly grateful. He didn't know what to say, though, and as the silence lengthened and became more awkward, he finally blurted out, "Why couldn't this wait until Friday? If you're just going to send me back the fuck home, why'd you get me up so damn early? Sir."

Well, that was a _touch _more aggressive than he'd been aiming for. Natasha raised an eyebrow at his tone, but Fury took it in stride. "Well, Barton, that's the thing. I'm _not _'sending you back the fuck home.'"

"You're reinstating me?" The disbelief in his own voice, he knew, probably wasn't helping him make the case that he _deserved _to be reinstated, but Fury magnanimously ignored that, as well.

"It's not that simple, Barton." Fury sighed. Clint clenched his jaw.

"Director," Natasha prompted, seeing that Clint was working his way out of 'disbelief' and into 'anger,' "Maybe you should tell us why we're here."

Fury sighed again. "The family of Samantha Paquette filed a missing person's report last night. She was supposed to show up at a family gathering on Sunday night. She didn't, and her apartment showed signs of a struggle." He took a breath, before adding, "We have reason to believe her disappearance is work related."

"What evidence?" Natasha asked, shooting a quick look at Clint.

"Her personal files were ransacked. Her laptop is missing. It's not much, but it just seems to point in that direction."

"So, what do you want us to do?" Clint asked, and his voice was steady. "Find her?"

Fury nodded. "She's privy to sensitive information. It'd be best if we could retrieve her and the lost data before anything happens—"

Clint interrupted with a snort. "Damn straight she's privy to some sensitive information." Then, to Fury, "Not that I'm complaining, but didn't she specifically say that I _shouldn't _be reinstated? How d'you think she'll feel that you've got me out looking for her?"

"You're not reinstated, Barton. Not permanently, and not fully. This is conditional. Your reinstatement lasts only until the completion of the mission. We'll work from there."

"What _is _the mission, exactly, sir?" Natasha still wasn't exactly clear on their course of action.

"Work with the police. See if you can find who took her, where they went, and why. Once you've figured that out, we can arrange a rescue mission. And Barton?"

Clint looked up from where he'd been examining the carpet.

"Romanoff takes the lead on this."

He nodded (because what else _could _he do?) and stood, pushing his chair back roughly. "Anything else? Sir?"

Fury shook his head. "I'll send the mission details to you both. Go get geared up."

* * *

Natasha led Clint out of Fury's office in much the same way she'd led him in. When the door had shut behind them, Clint slumped bonelessly against the empty receptionist's desk. He muttered, "Fuck, Nat."

Which was more or less her thoughts on the matter. He didn't say anything else, but Natasha waited patiently, and after a moment, Clint straightened and began moving again. "That's _really _not what I was expecting."

"Me neither," Natasha agreed cautiously, wanting to get a better feel for what Clint was thinking before she made any bold statements.

"Why did he even call me in for this?" Clint asked, a moment later, his voice laced with frustration. "I don't belong in the field yet. I don't even belong in this part of the building! Why the fuck would Fury—"

"Fury's not stupid," Natasha cut him off. "Yeah, he had the recommendation from your shrink, but he can make a decision on his own. And this is the one he made. You might not get it, but he has his reasons for putting you on this." They made it to the elevator, and Clint viciously stabbed the 'down' button.

"Yeah," Clint smirked, "Fury probably figures I'm extra invested in this because of the deep emotional bond between doctor and patient." He snorted. "More like I'm extra invested because I've been spilling my guts to her for three months and that's a bunch of shit I don't want her blabbing to some psychopath kidnapper."

Natasha sighed, but didn't interrupt. Clint was on a roll, and talking was better than not talking, after all.

"And talk about potential 'triggers.' I mean, fuck, anything could do it, right? I'm sure this is exactly the kind of stress I need to avoid, 'cause apparently I'm about a foot and a half away from using _all the damn time_. Maybe instead of going on a mission, I should take some time and work on some 'core issues.'" He lapsed into a moody silence that was interrupted by the arrival of the elevator. They both stepped on.

Natasha ventured into dangerous territory. "Are you really that surprised by what she said? I mean, you've been in those sessions for three months, it's not like what's been happening in them is a mystery to you."

Clint turned to her with narrowed eyes. "No, it's not a mystery. I just figured..."

"Figured what?"

The elevator doors opened, and they exited, turning towards the locker rooms. After a few steps, Clint muttered, "I just thought it would matter, you know? That all of this would _mean _something. But I'm right where I was at the beginning—"

Natasha reached out and placed her hand on his shoulder, stopping him. "Don't say that. It's not true."

He jerked away. "Bullshit."

Angry, now, she retorted, "No. You know what's bullshit? The idea that you're not doing any better. Give yourself some fucking credit. No. Give _me_ some fucking credit. I've stuck with you for months, dragging you kicking and screaming half the damn time. And you think that it's futile, that I'd just let you waste your time chipping away at a hopeless cause? That I'd just waste _my_ time letting you do that? You've changed, dumbass, and you're doing so much better than you were three months ago, fuck, three _weeks _ago, I don't even know how you can say otherwise."

At the end of her tirade, Clint looked chagrined. He started to apologize, "Nat, I..."

But she waved him off, moving into the locker rooms. "Don't say you're sorry. If that's really how you feel, then don't be sorry for it."

He followed her, clearly thinking. After a moment, he started, "I...don't. I don't really feel that way. Just sometimes...I think...that I'm never going to be like I was. That I'm never going to be...better."

Natasha sighed. "Barton, you're probably never going to be just like you were before." They stopped in front of his locker, full of the equipment he hadn't touched in three months. "Doesn't mean you're never going to be better."

Clint smirked and rolled his eyes. "Point taken. It's cheesy as hell, but point taken." He opened the locker, surveying its contents. "Now, what do you think we're going to need?"

* * *

Thanks to everyone who's reading/following/favoriting.

Please review. Without reviews, I assume that I've committed some massive fanfiction faux pas/misstep from which there is no recovering. That's stressful. And stress interferes with productivity.


	3. Massive Nefarious Plot

Warnings: just language. Gosh, I've gotten tame in my old age. Don't worry, it won't last.

My awesome beta, irite, has my gratitude for reading through this behemoth during the stupidest week of the year.

I do not own The Avengers.

* * *

Thor, Bruce had concluded, never came bearing good news.

Well, maybe that wasn't fair. In the months that he'd known the demigod, Thor had only delivered really terrible news twice. The first time, it had been "my brother is going to try and take over your world with an alien army." The second time, it was "my brother might have just found a way to weasel his way out of prison."

This time, well...

"I'm sorry, could you repeat that?" Tony asked. Thor opened his mouth to speak, but Tony interrupted him, "No, wait, actually, don't. I'm not sure I can handle hearing it again. Not this ungodly early in the morning."

Bruce didn't really think that 9:30 AM was 'ungodly early,' but he knew Tony's sleep schedule was...strange, to say the least. So he didn't point it out. After several beats of stunned and increasingly tense silence, though, the urge to speak became overwhelming, and in an attempt to clear the air, he muttered, "Well, we knew this was a possibility, right? I mean, it _was _kind of the point of his whole..." he gestured vaguely, "thing."

No one needed him to be more specific—the 'him' in question was, of course, Loki. And the 'thing' was Loki's grand escape plan.

And it _was _grand.

Several months ago, Thor had shown up on Earth, bearing the news that Loki had apparently confessed to setting aside several barrels full of Chitauri blood for his own experiments. This substance was extremely volatile, and it could alter the body's chemistry such that typically inert bodily fluids—such as sweat—became volatile as well. But Loki had never been able to complete his experiments, and the blood was left behind on Earth when he was unceremoniously carted back to Asgard (after attempting world domination, but that's another story).

Loki told Thor all of this, apparently out of some paternalistic concern that the humans could not be trusted with such a substance—clearly, it was dangerous, and the humans would only use it for ill. In fact, he was _so _adamant that the humans would misuse the blood that he staked his own freedom on his claim. If Thor traveled to Earth and found that it was as Loki said, that the humans _were _using the blood to cause harm, then Loki would be released—heralded as a hero, no less—his concern for the Midgardians' safety taken as proof of his changed character.

As it turned out, there were a couple of humans who _were _planning to use the blood to wreak havoc, in a desperate attempt to prove to the world how dangerous superhumans could be. What Loki didn't mention to anyone was that he had basically engineered it so things would go down that way, had planned it all out as an elaborate contingency plan in case his bid for world domination didn't pan out. And conveniently, no one could prove that was what had happened—only two people had known about Loki's plan, and they were both dead, killed in a showdown with the Avengers when they tried to actuate their plan.

Thor had gone to Odin to explain what had happened, but without proof of Loki's treachery, Odin could not back out of the deal the pair had struck, and Loki had been freed according to the terms of their agreement.

Apparently the 'heralded as a hero' thing didn't really happen, at least—no one trusted Loki, not after everything he'd done—but he was still allowed to settle into a quiet corner of the palace, where to everyone's amazement (they'd expected him to bolt the second the prison door shut behind him), he stayed. He returned to his magic, and his books, and he lived largely undisturbed for three months under the careful (and not always subtle) watch of the palace guards.

Until he was just...gone.

Which was the news that Thor had just brought back from his latest trip to Asgard.

"When did he go missing, exactly?" Steve asked, shaking his head. Loki's scheme was so convoluted that thinking about it kind of gave him a headache. He just wanted the facts, wanted to know what he had to deal with.

"This morning," Thor answered. "Or perhaps last night."

"And there wasn't an alarm or something? Guards?" Tony asked. "Seems awfully trusting, leaving the megalomaniacal psycho on his own."

Thor sent the billionaire a pointed glare. "Loki was not a prisoner, Stark." This was something they'd hashed out several times already. "He was watched, yes, but not guarded."

Tony snarled, "Well that's fucking stupid, he's _insane_—"

Before the two of them could start sniping at each other (again), Bruce decided to get everyone back on track. "I don't suppose he left a note or something?"

Thor, Tony, and Steve all turned to look at him like he was stupid, which Bruce thought wasn't really necessary—everyone knows that scientists like to start with the easy stuff first, build from the ground up. Still, he supposed that maybe they were a little too tense to appreciate his methodology (they really needed to relax, in his opinion) so he shrugged. "Just thought I'd ask."

"He did not leave a note," Thor said after a moment. Then, reluctantly, like he knew the others weren't going to like what he was about to say, "I cannot help but worry."

"About what?" Steve asked, trying to be diplomatic. He knew that this could not be easy for Thor, being forced to deal with his crazy brother all the time.

Bruce was wondering the same thing. He was worried, too—Loki falling off the map just wasn't a good thing. He hadn't spent much time with the demigod, but just judging from what had happened during the time they _had _spent together (throughout which Bruce had been 'hulked out,' and that hadn't been fun for either of them), Bruce felt that any kind of friendly relationship between them wasn't going to happen. The other Avengers likely felt the same way. Probably, they were always going to be at homicidal odds with Loki, or at the very least deeply antipathetic. But from the way Thor had spoken, Bruce was pretty sure Thor wasn't worried about what possible destruction and chaos his brother might be ready to bring forth, or what massive conflict might be looming. No, it was something else.

Thor confirmed Bruce's suspicions. "I am not certain that my brother left, so much as he may have been...taken."

"By whom?" Bruce inquired, curious, just as Tony scoffed, "Yeah, right, I can fucking see that." They looked at each other, and at Bruce's frown Tony corrected himself hastily, "I mean, uh, by whom?"

Thor shrugged. "I know not. But if he was simply going to run, why would he wait so long to depart? And it is not like my brother to simply slip away in the night."

That, Bruce knew, was true. Loki was—as Tony had once put it—dramatic. His exit from Asgard probably would have been memorable, probably worthy of the history books. It certainly wouldn't have been secretive and silent.

Steve looked like he was thinking something similar. But when he spoke, all he said was, "Until we know more, let's treat this as a threat to us. We can tweak our plan later, if we need to, but our first priority has to be protecting ourselves."

Tony raised his hand, somehow managing to make the simple gesture sarcastic. "Just curious. When you say 'protect ourselves,' are you referring to _us _or, you know, to the whole world?"

Steve sighed, running a hand roughly through his hair. "The whole world, Tony."

"Damn it. I knew you were going to say that. Can I at least get some more coffee before we get started? I refuse to do any world-saving until after my second cup."

Standing from where he was seated at the kitchen table, Steve said, "Yeah, go ahead. We," he gestured between himself and Thor, "need to tell Fury what's going on." He looked like the idea depressed him profoundly; Thor did not look any more enthused. Together, they slumped from the room to make the call.

Bruce looked at Tony. "What d'you think the odds are that there _isn't _some massive, nefarious plot at the center of all of this?"

Tony took a huge gulp of coffee and refilled his cup. "Do you really need to ask?"

And really, Bruce didn't; he'd put the odds somewhere _very _close to zero.

* * *

"Ready to go play detective?" Natasha asked.

Clint wasn't. As grateful as he was to be back 'in the field,' he'd really rather do just about anything else. Something simple, to the point. Maybe...paperwork. None of this investigating bullshit, none of this talking-to-civilians stuff. In fact, during their walk from the locker room to the car, Clint had hashed out an extensive list of things he would rather do than work a missing persons case for some random SHIELD employee—who also happened to be his psychologist.

He told Natasha as much, and she laughed. "Well, you're just going to have to deal with it. The faster we get this over with, the faster we can get back to doing _normal _stuff."

Clint appreciated how she didn't express even the slightest bit of doubt that this 'mission' was going to lead to his reinstatement and not his complete dismissal from the agency. Personally, Clint wasn't even sure _why _he was back in the field—his shrink had indicated in her notes that he wasn't ready to take this step yet, which Clint in turn took as a pretty solid indication that he shouldn't be here—so it was nice that Natasha had that kind of faith.

Because Clint sure as hell didn't.

Pushing those thoughts away (because dwelling on his own numerous failings was a sure-fire way to set off his anxiety—'triggers,' Sam called them, and Christ did Clint _hate _that word), he asked, "Where are we going?" He leaned over to fiddle impatiently with the radio.

Natasha batted his hand away from the buttons. "I can't take pop music this early, Barton. And we're heading to the address in that file," she indicated the file he had in his hand, "which I've told you twice already."

Clint sighed. He knew that. Really.

They drove in silence for another ten minutes, Natasha making a few occasional turns, until they pulled onto a quiet block on a quiet street. Well, it seemed like it would usually be quiet—at the moment, though, there were several police cars parked in front of the last house on the block, and the property was roped off with police tape. Natasha pulled up behind the police cars and parked. She pulled out her cell phone and checked the information that Fury had sent over during their drive. "Okay, Fury says we're FBI agents today."

Clint snorted—he loved impersonating other agencies. "Did you bring the right IDs?"

Natasha glared at him. "Of course I did." She was always prepared, after all. "Check the glove box."

He reached in and pulled out a couple of envelopes. Inside the second one he opened, there were two FBI badges. He flipped his open and handed over Natasha's, taking in his information while tapping out a quick, nervous beat with his foot.

Natasha glanced over at him. "Don't you think all of this would be easier if SHIELD would just admit it existed?" SHIELD's ridiculous need for secrecy was something they talked about often. It was familiar territory, and Clint fell into the conversation easily, grateful for the distraction.

"Yeah, like that's ever going to happen. I think Fury likes playing super spy too much for that." He paused, glancing quickly in the mirror and donning his sunglasses. "It'd be a hell of a lot easier to explain. I mean, why's the FBI supposedly wrapped up in this?"

Natasha adjusted her own sunglasses and shrugged. "Missing persons case. The FBI does those, right? You ready to go?"

And Clint really didn't think he was, but he'd never been one to let something like that stop him before all of this shit had happened, so why let it bog him down now? He was trying to get back to 'normal,' wasn't he? "Yeah, let's do this." They both got out of the car and approached the house, flashing their fake IDs to the cops at the perimeter. They were let by without a second glance.

The crime scene wasn't much to look at. Sam's house was smaller than what Clint would have expected given what he knew her paycheck looked like (he and Tony had done some snooping around). What Clint assumed was the office looked like it had been rifled through, but aside from a single broken glass in the kitchen and an overturned houseplant in the dining room, there was no other indication that anything had happened.

But they weren't there to investigate the crime scene, not really. Their investigations tended to focus more on the 'human element.'

Mostly, what it amounted to was that they investigated the other investigators, subtly milking them for information about the scene, the evidence, listening for anything that struck them as something that might of interest to SHIELD. If something _did _come up, they'd just appropriate the evidence and take it back to SHIELD for analysis.

So they wandered back and forth through the crime scene, blending in, all the while quietly gathering intel about the course of the investigation. They passed most of the morning this way, until Clint saw Natasha beckon him over, and the two of them convened outside the house.

"What've you got?" Clint asked. "Because I've got exactly shit." And it was about ten times more frustrating than it normally would have been, because he couldn't tell if it was because he was out of practice or if there really wasn't any information here to gather.

Natasha shook her head grimly. "I don't really have anything, either. They haven't found anything, not fingerprints, footprints, DNA...none of the neighbors saw anything, and there's no sign of forced entry. The only evidence is that there _is _no evidence."

It was reassuring that Natasha hadn't gotten much, either, but that wasn't really something Clint wanted to report back to Fury. "We could check out her office. See if there's anything there." If this had been an abduction, then there was no reason that there _should_ be any evidence in her office, but Fury _had _mentioned that this might be work-related. And checking out a possible threat to SHIELD's facility sounded a hell of a lot more appealing that admitting to Fury they'd struck out.

With a shrug, Natasha answered, "That's a good idea. Fury's probably going to send us there, anyway."

They headed back towards the car. Clint checked his watch. It was almost 10:00 AM. "Any chance we can get some food first? I'm fucking starving."

"Sure." Natasha's phone began to ring, and she pulled it out of her pocket. She made a face. "It's Fury." She answered with her usual terse, "This is Romanoff."

Taking advantage of her distraction, Clint swiped the car keys from her hand and opened the driver's door. Natasha, who was listening intently to whatever Fury was saying, just waved him off and walked around the car to the passenger's side.

Clint started the drive back towards SHIELD's headquarters, listening to Natasha's half of the conversation, which consisted entirely of 'yes sir' and 'of course sir.' Clint wasn't sure if it was his imagination, but it seemed like she was casting an unusual amount of glances his way. After a couple of minutes, she ended the call. "Sorry, Barton, breakfast is out. I need to see Fury."

Annoyed, Clint asked, "Why? What the hell's wrong now?" Her use of "I" and not "we" escaped him entirely.

Natasha turned and looked at him for a long moment, considering. Then, clearly conflicted, she sighed. "Don't...freak out, okay?"

So it _hadn't _been his imagination. Something was up, and whatever it was, it concerned him. "That's a bad fucking way to start, if you don't want me to 'freak out,'" Clint growled, his patience evaporating.

Natasha's eyes flashed. "Fine. Thor's back from Asgard. Loki's finally flown the coop. They can't find him."

To his credit, Clint did _not _freak out.

Now, nearly three months ago, when Natasha had told him about Loki's release from prison, he'd freaked out then. Especially when he figured out that the crux of the problem was that no one could prove that Loki had orchestrated the whole thing with the Chitauri blood and the mad scientists. Without proof, Odin couldn't renege on his end of his deal with Loki, which meant that Loki got to go free. That was bad enough on its own. But the reason that no one could prove Loki was behind it all? The only two people who had known about Loki's involvement were dead—one through a freak accident and the other, well.

Clint had shot him. And not _entirely _because he'd planned on it. It had been more of a...spur of the moment thing, the direct result of being in the middle of amphetamine withdrawal and unable to control himself.

Because of the resultant lack of evidence, Loki was released from his prison. Clint knew it was only a matter of time before Loki was back to causing trouble, and when it came down to it? It was Clint's fault that the demigod was getting his second chance.

And when all of that clicked, _that _had merited freaking out. Which Clint had done promptly and with great gusto. The very thought of dealing with Loki—of dealing with what Loki had done to him, what he could very well do again—had sent him spiraling. The resultant days of anxiety were so bad that it had prompted Sam's second attempt at working on his 'control issues,' but that hadn't gone so well, either—he'd thrown a chair out a window.

But he'd had the last three months to get used to the idea, to calm down. He'd gotten his 'freaking out' out of his system, had gained some distance and consequently, some perspective. And, well, an additional three months of therapy hadn't hurt, either. So, no, he didn't freak out now. In fact, he kind of resented the implication that he would. Even if his heart rate did seem a little fast, and his palms were a little sweaty, that could mean anything. This was definitely not a big deal. So, casually, he asked, "Yeah? What's that got to do with us?"

Narrowing her eyes at Clint's unusually long pause, Natasha took in his demeanor. Apparently unable to detect anything seriously amiss (_Keep it together, Barton, there you go, breathe_), she said, "We don't know if he's a threat. And Thor's worried he might have been kidnapped or something."

Clint clenched his hands around the steering wheel, his irritation at the first part of what she'd said overwhelming his glee at the second part. "Oh, he's a fucking threat. If we're not treating him as a fucking threat, I'm not on board."

Looking straight ahead, Natasha stated levelly, "Fury doesn't want you on this. He wants you to keep working on Paquette's disappearance."

He whipped around to glare at her. "That's bullshit! If that psycho's on the loose, then—"

"Watch the damn road!" Natasha snarled. Clint snapped his head back around obediently, and when she was satisfied he wasn't going to drive them off a bridge or something, Natasha asked more softly, "Why would you even _want _to be involved?"

That was easy. _Because I've spent every day since last May planning what I'd do to that bastard if I ever saw him again._

"Because I need to stop avoiding my problems," he said aloud. It was true, and it sounded like a far more rational response than what he'd been thinking. "And he's one big fucking problem."

Natasha didn't buy it for a second. "Right. I'm sure that's exactly it, too."

Clint slammed his hands on the steering wheel. "What the fuck do you want me to say, Nat?"

"The truth, maybe? 'Cause I thought you'd finally figured out how bad of an idea lying to yourself is."

Clint gritted his teeth. The truth was that he didn't know the truth. Yeah, he wanted to get his hands on Loki, but he also wanted to run as far and fast in the opposite direction as he could. The two desires were battling it out, and he wasn't sure which one was going to win. So he just shook his head slowly, trying to ease the tension in his neck. "Okay. Honestly? I don't fucking know, Nat. If I figure it out...I'll let you know."

"That's all I want, Barton."

The rest of the ride back to SHIELD was silent.

* * *

Back at headquarters, Clint left Natasha at the door with, "I'm going to check out Paquette's office." As he was walking away, he added, "Send Fury my regards." And so when Natasha strode into Fury's office, she was alone. Which everyone immediately noticed.

"Where's Barton?" Tony asked. "It's not a party without him."

"Agent Barton isn't available at the moment," Fury answered, his glare clearly saying 'drop it.' "Now, Romanoff, I need to fill you in."

Natasha listened as Fury, with ample input from Thor, explained everything they knew about the situation. When they were done, Natasha felt something that seemed distinctly like a migraine coming on. "So what you're saying is that we have no idea what's going on, but Loki's out in the universe somewhere, and he might be heading this way or he might not."

"More or less," Tony chirped from his seat in front of Fury's desk. He took a gulp from the huge mug of coffee he held in one hand. "I personally like the part where Point Break over there thinks his innocent baby brother is a _victim _or something."

Thor bristled. "We cannot prove anything right now—"

"And that's the problem," Fury cut in, before either Steve or Bruce could diffuse the situation. 'We need to find Loki. At the very least, we need to know if he's here." He looked at Tony. "We need to find a way to track him."

"Oh, sure, I'll get right on that, Nick," Tony said airily. "Let me just use my magical...god tracking ray and we'll find him in no time." He leveled Fury with a glare. "Can't be done, sorry."

Fury rolled his eye. "Stark, you made a new fucking element in a matter of days. Forgive me if I think that something like this is well within your capabilities."

Tony, Natasha knew, always liked to hear about how awesome he was. It was a sure-fire way to get him on your side. Even now, he was already looking more thoughtful than belligerent, like he was actually considering possibilities instead of dismissing Fury outright.

Seeing that Tony was coming around, Fury directed, "Take Banner, see if you two geniuses can knock something together."

"Gimme Goldilocks, too," Tony demanded, "And I'll see what I can do." At Fury's affirmative nod, Tony stood and bounded from the room, waving vaguely for the others to follow him.

Bruce looked put out that he'd been volunteered, and Thor didn't realize that 'Goldilocks' was referring to him, but when Fury glared at them both, they both took the hint and followed Tony out the door.

"What should we do, director?" Steve asked when it was just him and Natasha.

"I need both of you coordinating with international agencies. You're both on flights out of here. Romanoff, you're leaving in half an hour. Rogers, you've got an hour."

"But—" Natasha started. Half an hour wasn't enough time for her to find Clint and tell him what was happening. And he was already annoyed that he wasn't involved in this; flying off to some other country wasn't going to help smooth things over, either between the two of them, or between Clint and Fury.

Fury interrupted her. "Don't worry about Barton. He's working on the Paquette case; I'll keep him busy."

Natasha snorted. She didn't doubt that. But she felt obliged to warn him, "He's pretty angry with you, sir."

Fury grimaced. "It's not the first time. But he doesn't belong here, no matter what he thinks."

Steve's eyebrows crept up. "You're deliberately keeping Agent Barton out of this?" That didn't sit well with Steve. He knew that Clint would want to be involved, especially since they were dealing with Loki.

"It's for his own damn good." Steve looked like he was going to say something else, but Fury cut him off with, "You're dismissed, Rogers. Romanoff."

The pair of them left his office, heading to do whatever small amount of packing they could before they had to head out.

As Natasha headed down to the locker room for the second time that day, she couldn't help but wonder if Fury had the right idea. Was it really beneficial to Clint to be kept off this detail? Or was Fury's reluctance to involve the archer based on something else?

Either way, Natasha knew one thing for certain. Fury could try to keep Clint away from this situation, but through the actions of some fundamental law of the universe, Clint always seemed to end up right in the damn middle of _everything_.

This, Natasha suspected, wasn't going to turn out any differently.

* * *

There was protocol for doing this sort of thing, Clint knew, but he was altogether too resentful to adhere to it. So instead of going through the proper channels to get into his shrink's office, Clint just picked the lock on the door and let himself in.

This, he thought, was an improvement over his initial plan to scale the building and kick the window in.

He did a cursory investigation of the room before heading for Sam's computer. It seemed like everything was intact there, nothing was out of place, at least, no one had stolen the hard drive or anything. Like everything else so far, there was just nothing to see.

Really, this whole endeavor seemed fucking pointless. The case had no evidence, nothing to work with. Sam had apparently just disappeared off the face of the planet. And until more evidence appeared, Clint thought he'd be a whole lot more useful working on the Loki thing. Like, he'd have any use at all. And if Fury didn't agree, if he thought Clint wasn't ready to be reinstated yet, then...Clint would deal with that.

_Because that's what I do now. I 'deal' with things_.

He was just about to close everything out, shut the computer down, and head over to Fury's office for what was sure to be an epic confrontation, when the 'patient records' folder caught his eye.

_You really shouldn't_.

There were a thousand ethical issues with it—he was abusing his position, for one. But he couldn't deny he was curious. After what Sam had written in her notes to Fury, Clint _really_ wanted to get a look at what else she'd said about him. And God only knew what _else _was in the file. They'd have the records from all of his previous psych evals, including the one he'd had last May immediately post-battle. Having all that information might be useful when he went to talk to Fury—at the very least, he deserved to have the same ammunition as the director, right?

It was that last thought—and the sudden, burning need to _know _what Fury knew—that spurred him into action. Quickly, he searched through Sam's desk drawers until he found a flash drive. He opened the 'patient records' folder, and scrolled down until he found the one labeled 'Barton, Clint.'

He copied the whole folder to the flash drive, then unplugged it. He shut down Sam's computer and, stuffing the flash drive in his coat pocket, he slipped from her office after checking to make sure no one was watching him. Because, yeah, he was authorized to be there (well, like, 67% authorized at least), but it was just easier to be sneaky. Fewer questions were always better, in his experience.

Clint made his way downstairs and back out to the parking lot, planning to go home and read through his file before coming back up to HQ and confronting Fury. He was heading down the sidewalk when someone bumped into him, hard, nearly knocking him over.

"Sorry," the man muttered, before continuing on his way, not even sparing Clint a second glance.

It was rude, but not rude enough to dwell on, so with a shrug, Clint headed through the parking lot. Standing next to the car and rooting through his coat pockets, he found his keys easily enough, but he noticed that something else was missing.

The flash drive.

Quickly, he retraced his steps. He'd slipped it into his coat pocket in Sam's office, he'd been playing with it during the elevator ride down...he'd definitely had it when he'd left the building...

And then it clicked. The guy who'd bumped into him.

Clint had just been robbed.

Trying—and failing—to get a handle on the anger rising in his chest, he turned in place, scanning in every direction, but the guy was long gone.

Gone, and carrying information that Clint would probably have done anything to ensure that no one ever saw.

The anger flashed, bright and hot, and with a frustrated snarl, Clint slammed one fist into the side of the car. He cursed loudly and took several deep breaths, willing the throbbing pain in his hand to quiet. When he'd calmed, he turned and headed towards the doors to the main part of the building.

Fury's secretary tried to stop him before he busted into Fury's office, but something in Clint's demeanor made her think better of putting any serious effort into it. He ignored her squeal of, "You can't go in there!" entirely

Fury was sitting at his desk, but he looked up when Clint strode in.

"Barton," he said, rising, "What the fuck are you—"

"Can you think of anyone who might want my psych records?" Clint blurted out. "Because they were just fucking stolen."

Fury stared at him for a good three seconds before he ground out, "Explain."

* * *

Thanks for reading!

Please review. Even if you just want to say, 'wtf is this shit,' that's fine. Seriously.


	4. Games

Warnings: language, brief references to past drug use.

My beta, irite, is the best. But you all know that already, don't you? You should.

I do not own The Avengers.

* * *

"I'm not really sure what kind of magic shit Fury expects us to do," Tony grumbled to Bruce and Thor, leading them out of SHIELD's headquarters. "It's not like I can just whip something up to track Loki. I mean, maybe if we'd RFID tagged him like I _suggested _the last time we had him in custody, but noooo we couldn't do that, it's not 'ethical' or something..." He continued complaining and whining in a way that Bruce found _almost _uncharacteristic until they were back at the Tower.

He fell into silence in the elevator, but when the doors opened, he positively bounced out, striding purposefully towards his lab. Thor and Bruce trailed behind him, watching as he zipped around the room, greeting his robots, entering passwords, unlocking his workspace, chatting cheerily with his AI.

He didn't seem _anywhere _near as disgruntled as he had at SHIELD's headquarters.

Bruce watched him for several moments, trying to get a handle on the billionaire's shift in demeanor, before he suggested cautiously, "I was thinking that simple facial recognition might do it, Tony. It worked once." Really, he didn't understand why SHIELD hadn't just done this themselves.

Tony nodded, plopping down in one of the office chairs and idly spinning around. "That's true. And that's probably what we're going to go with. But you and me, Brucie, can do it _so _much better than SHIELD, am I right? At least, Fury seems to think so." He rolled his eyes. "Like I have nothing better to do than pro bono work that he could do his own damn self. Or at least pay me for."

Bruce shot a quick glance at Thor, who was staring at the pair of scientists, apparently bewildered by their exchange. To Tony, he said, "Don't call me 'Brucie.' And don't pretend you're not getting paid for this; just because it's not quite the consulting fee you're used to doesn't mean it's 'pro bono.' Anyway, if that's all you were planning on doing, then why've you been complaining so much? Why'd you drag Thor along? I don't think he's going to be much help writing up a facial recognition program...No offense."

"None taken," Thor offered.

His words were overshadowed by Tony's exuberant return to pacing the lab. "I was complaining, _Brucie_, because I want Fury to think we're doing something technologically amazing and magical. The more he relies on us, the better. Then maybe he'll stop making so many damn decisions on his own and just expecting us to jump for him. If he thinks he's the only manipulative bastard in this equation, he's wrong. Now, Blondie's here because we need information, and I wanted to talk somewhere that _wasn't _crawling with SHIELD bugs. So, oh Thunderous One," he fixed his gaze on Thor, "I think it's about time for you to come clean about your brother. Who's after him and why?"

Thor became immediately defensive. "I told you, I do not know for certain that my brother was taken, let alone by whom."

Tony waved him off. The more he'd thought about it, the more likely it seemed that Loki had been abducted—he just wasn't the type to slip quietly into the night. That's not how prima donnas rolled, not when they had a golden opportunity for chaos and drama. "Yeah, but I kinda think that's bullshit. You knew about the Chitauri before we had any idea what was going on, and I think that probably means you know more about this than you're letting on."

Bruce sighed. He wished that these two could be in a room together for thirty seconds without antagonizing each other, but apparently that was just never going to happen. Still, he attempted to defuse the situation some; seeing Tony beaten into the floor by a Norse deity would be entertaining but ultimately unproductive. "Tony, maybe now's not the time for this—"

Tony never let a situation be defused, not if he could help it. "No. This is the time. If someone's pissed off enough to go after Loki, chances are damn good they're pissed off enough to come after us next. And I'm not letting a bunch of fucking aliens screw up my world again. So spill, Point Break."

Thor growled in irritation, either at Tony's endless litany of obnoxious nicknames or at the billionaire's casual belligerence. "Stark. I know _nothing _for certain. I can only speculate—"

"Then speculate. We're waiting."

Thor did not seem inclined towards being forthright, but at Tony's expectant look, he nonetheless began, "As I told you upon our first meeting, I suspected that Loki was working with someone else from the beginning. For who put the spear in his hand, who gave him an army to command? He had to have had an ally. His failure to obtain the Tesseract was probably not taken well by that ally, and I fear they have come to take Loki's life as alternate payment for the services they rendered."

"Not possible," Tony stated, confident, definitive. "I blew the hell out of their little spaceship, they're all dead. I saw their bodies in the streets myself. So did you, for that matter."

Thor nodded slowly. "That's true, and yet..."

"But what?" Tony prompted, after the demigod had trailed off.

"What if some still live? What if whatever, whoever, commanded them still lives? Someone _must _have been commanding them, someone must have handed them over to Loki. And that someone may well have been displeased by Loki's...lack of success."

Bruce rubbed roughly at his brow. He didn't necessarily agree with Thor's assessment—he didn't really think it beyond Loki's capabilities to slip away secretly just to throw them off—but if Thor was right, and Loki had been taken, that meant that trying to track him was pointless. He wouldn't be showing up on Earth. "So should we even bother with the facial recognition stuff, then? If Loki's been kidnapped or something, he's probably not going to be showing up here."

Tony was shaking his head. "No, we do what Fury wants. It'll make him happy, for one. And there's still like, a 13% chance of Loki. I'm not letting him fuck up my world for lack of preparation. So, Bruce, you'n'me are gonna work on that. Rapunzel, don't touch anything. Go do whatever. If I need you, I'll call."

Tony tugged Bruce over to one of the consoles, and, with an apologetic look over his shoulder at Thor, the physicist allowed himself to be pulled along. He didn't like that they were apparently playing some kind of game with Fury, but once Tony got an idea in his head, it was pretty much pointless trying to dissuade him.

It was probably best to just get this over with.

* * *

"So, just to be clear, you hacked your shrink's computer, stole your own records, and then someone lifted them off of you in the parking lot?" Fury had listened in silence as Clint told him what had happened, but now he sounded incredulous and there was a vein visibly throbbing in his forehead.

"Well...yeah?" Clint answered. He wasn't sure that 'hacked' was quite the right word for what he'd done (since it hadn't required any serious computer skills...Sam's password had been 'password' for Christ's sake) but he didn't really think that engaging Fury on semantics was the best course of action at the moment. Not given what he'd just had to admit.

There was a long, tense pause. "I see," Fury growled when Clint made no further effort to explain himself. "And do you have anything else you'd like to add?"

"Like what?" It took effort, but he didn't think that had come out hostile. Well, not too much, anyway.

"Oh, I don't know, Barton. A motherfucking apology, maybe? Some indication that you're aware that what you did was wrong?"

Hmm. Clint _had _left that part out. Well, if it would help get him back on Fury's good side... "I'm sorry—"

Fury apparently hadn't been seriously looking for an apology, and he wasn't quite done chewing Clint out yet. "Not only did you commit a damn felony—again!—you've put this whole agency at risk—"

"How d'you figure?" Clint interrupted, growing angry in turn. That accusation stung. Still, he tried to keep his increasing agitation out of his voice. Flipping out wouldn't really further his cause.

Fury leveled him with a glare. "Do you really think that anyone who would steal that information would hesitate to use it against you? Would hesitate to use _you_ against _us _if presented with the slightest opportunity to do so?"

Okay, maybe that was a fair point. But still, "You can't know that anything like that's going to happen. Maybe that guy didn't know _what _was on that thumb drive, I mean, how could he? Maybe I was just...robbed." Even to him, it sounded lame.

Fury thought so, too. "You're right. I can't know for sure. I just have a feeling. Call me a pessimist, but that robbery? Seems a little too convenient for me. Seems like someone was watching you, Barton. And you dropped the ball."

Clint looked down at his feet, glaring at the ground between them, grinding his teeth. Yeah, he _knew _he was getting sloppy after three months on leave, Fury didn't need to rub it in. After a moment, Fury continued, "And now we've got to deal with this on top of the new Loki shit. So I'm going to start by dealing with you."

Clint's head snapped up. "Sir?"

"Barton. You can't keep going off half-cocked, trying to do things on your own when there's official channels that exist for a reason. If you wanted a copy of your records, you could have requested a copy from Psych Services."

For a moment, Clint considered pointing out that the copy he'd get that way wouldn't have included Sam's personal notes, but he thought better of it. Instead, he nodded roughly. "I know that, sir."

"I don't think you do. If you did, you'd _stop_ _doing it_." Fury sighed. "There's only so much I can take, Barton. And if one of my agents doesn't trust me, I find it pretty damn hard to trust him_._"

"What? I trust you, sir—"

But Fury was shaking his head. "You don't. You don't trust this organization to do what's in your best interest." He raised a hand to silence Clint's protest, "And I get it. After what happened, it makes sense that you need to try and control how things are going to go, what other people are going to do. But you can't always do that. And that's the kind of shit that you've been supposed to have been fixing for the last three months." He looked evenly at Clint. "You haven't."

The words 'control issues' drifted through Clint's mind, and he clenched his jaw. Well, no point in denying it, not if Fury thought he had such a crystal fucking clear picture of what was going on. "No, sir."

"I can't reinstate you, Barton. Not yet."

And even though he'd know that was probably coming, it still hit him hard. Still, he kept a lid on his emotions, didn't lash out. After a few deep breaths, he asked, remarkably calmly, "What should I do? Can I still help with the investigation or am I back to square one?"

Fury considered him carefully for several seconds. Honestly, he seemed surprised by how well Clint had taken his decision, something that Clint tried really hard not to resent. _It's not like I've made _no _progress in three months, Christ. Give me some damn credit. I can handle a setback without falling apart._

Although, maybe Clint was kind of surprised by how well he was taking it, too. _But then, staying calm is a hell of a lot easier when you're not strung out, isn't it?_

"You can help in an unofficial capacity only," Fury declared, in answer to Clint's question. "And I want you working damn close with another agent. Romanoff, preferably, since she already knows what the hell's going on with you and with the case. She's on a mission right now, though. Should be back in a couple of days."

"And in the meantime?"

Fury shrugged. "Take some time, Barton. Relax. It's been a damn long day, don't you think?"

Clint snorted. "You're just sending me home. To 'rest.' Sir, I've been resting for three months."

"Yeah, well, I leave you alone for five minutes and you commit a felony, Barton. You're not doing any more solo work 'til I'm sure you can handle it. Once Romanoff is back, we'll see what I can do with you."

And instead of flipping out at Fury's tone, or becoming frustrated at his own rampant tendency to fuck everything up, or even getting agitated about being benched, Clint just gave a terse nod. "Fine. Sir."

As he walked out of Fury's office, he couldn't help but feel just a _little bit _proud of how well he'd handled the situation. Because he might be fucking things up still, and he might be trying to escape the ghosts of past fuck-ups that were dogging his steps, and he might be miles and miles away from being ready to get back to work, but compared to how this meeting could have gone? He'd done amazingly. Minimal anxiety, no panic. He'd kept it together, even with the stress of the robbery and its implications, of admitting what he'd done...

And he'd done it on his own.

In fact, he was so pleased about that, he almost forgot to think about Loki at all.

Almost.

* * *

Thor managed to make it almost forty-five minutes in the lab, not touching anything and listening to Bruce and Tony call ideas back and forth in a language he barely registered as English, before he decided that Tony had been serious when he'd said 'if I need you, I'll call' and that it was thus probably okay to wander off. So when Clint walked in quite a bit later, it was down to just Bruce and Tony.

Bruce barely even looked up when the door to the lab slid open behind him, he was so engrossed in programming. He gave Clint a vague wave as he walked in and went promptly back to work, pushing his glasses up his nose.

Tony, though, swiveled around in his chair. "Hey, Barton. You missed our little Avengers Assembly this morning."

Clint answered him with an attempt at a smile that ending up feeling an awful lot like a grimace. "Yeah. Well. Fury had me doing something else."

Now Bruce looked up. "Oh, that's right. Your meeting was this morning, wasn't it? How'd it go?"

Clint frowned. "It went all right."

"Then you're back to being a super spy assassin badass?" Tony prodded.

"Um." Clint scratched the back of his head awkwardly. "No."

Tony couldn't let something like that go. "No? What happened? Did Fury decide to reassign you to a different division? The aviary, maybe?"

Bruce groaned.

Clint cocked his head to one side, puzzled. "What? SHIELD doesn't have an aviary—oh. You're making a bird joke."

"A bad one, yeah. Sorry." Tony shrugged. "Seriously, though. What gives?"

Clint considered the two scientists in front of him. The way he saw it, they'd seen him at his worst, when he'd been in the process of hitting rock bottom. So admitting this wasn't all that big of a deal.

Besides, he had to start trusting people instead of trying to control them, apparently.

"My shrink said I wasn't ready. Fury agreed."

Bruce interjected, "But you just said—"

Clint interrupted him, "So he decided to try out a sort of conditional probation thing, working with Nat. Sent us out to work an investigation. Then she got called in for the Loki thing—"

This time Tony interrupted, "And you didn't? What the hell is that?" Bruce nodded his vigorous agreement with Tony's assessment of the situation.

Clint had to smile at how defensive they were about the call Fury had made; it was good to know that the team had his back. Even if Clint kind of understood _why _Fury had decided what he had (and Clint had just given him even more reason to think that he wasn't ready), it still stung. The support from his team helped.

"Fury has his reasons," Clint said, in what he hoped was a calm, rational tone. The twin looks of disbelief on the scientists' faces indicated that he'd hit his mark. "What? He's right. I'm not ready." A hard sentence to choke out, but he managed.

The disbelieving looks only intensified.

Clint wasn't sure how much, if anything, he could tell them about the investigation into his shrink's disappearance, but he needed to make this point. "Look. Believe it or not, Fury's got a good reason for making that call. Earlier today, I broke into my shrink's office and stole my records so I'd know what she was telling Fury. I'm not ready to be back in the field—'control issues' and shit."

Momentarily startled by Clint's admission, Tony recovered quickly. "Well, I mean...yeah." He raised an eyebrow. "Incidentally, what _was _your shrink telling Fury?"

Clint felt his shoulders tense minutely, but he forced himself to relax. "Funny story about that." Fury hadn't specifically said he couldn't tell anyone about what had happened, and maybe the genius twins might be able to help with this little problem. "I never actually got to take a look."

His tone was decidedly grumpy, and Bruce looked at him curiously. "Why not?"

Trying to sound light, Clint answered, "Oh, you know. Got robbed in the parking lot as I was trying to make my grand escape. Someone snatched the flash drive right out of my coat. So I had to go admit to Fury what I'd done, since it's a huge fucking security breach and all. And now he's pissed, and I'm fucked, basically. So I think he probably made the right call to keep me out of the game a while longer."

And instead of making some crack about how clearly Clint was losing his touch (_Which you are, Barton_), or harping more on whether or not Clint should be reinstated, Tony shot Clint a brief narrow-eyed look before he offered, "I might be able to track it down." He looked at Bruce. "Do you think if we—"

Bruce nodded quickly. "Of course, we'd need—"

Clint held up a hand, silencing them. "Whatever you can do, whatever you need, just let me know. Or, better, let Fury know. Or Nat. But could you maybe save the technobabble?" Listening to those two talk was exhausting on a _good _day.

With a chuckle, Tony said, "Suit yourself, birdbrain. We'll see what we can do ASAP. But what wonderful task does Fury have you on now?"

Clint shrugged at them. "Nat got called in for the Loki thing, and since she's on a mission, I'm back on leave until she gets back. So I came home. No mission."

"Well, Legolas, that's awfully..." Tony trailed off before picking up, "Obedient of you. The going home part, not the breaking and entering part."

Somehow, 'obedient' didn't sound like a compliment.

Clint felt one corner of his mouth turn up. "Well, I actually came down here to see what you guys were up to. See if you've found that psychopath yet. So I'm not following orders as well as I could be. I'm supposed to be 'resting' or some shit. Fury doesn't want me anywhere _near_ Loki." Yeah, he understood why Fury had tried to shut him out, and maybe he even agreed a little bit...but could he just sit and do _nothing _if Loki might be nearby? Hell no.

That wasn't 'control issues,' that was just common sense.

Definitely.

"And there's the Clint Barton we all know and love!" Tony chirped, whirling his chair back around to face his screen. "Come over here and check it out. You done with your section, Bruce?"

"Yeah, I just sent it over—"

"Great, let me just...okay. Okay, there we go. Now you can come see."

Clint wandered up behind Tony and peered over his shoulder, taking in what was on the screen. He had no idea what he was looking at.

Tony explained, "Facial recognition software, basically. Like, the best facial recognition software ever made. I'm not really sure what Fury _expected _us to do, but this is what we're working with."

With a nod, Clint asked, "So how's it work?"

"It's pretty standard," Bruce explained. "Basically we're getting real-time input from security cameras, news sources, blogs, that sort of thing. The program scans the images for matches, then lets us know where matches come from. It's not perfect, but it's a good start."

Tony added, "I thought maybe we could just track the chemical signature of whatever the fuck Loki puts in his hair to make it do that...thing, but Thor didn't have a sample." He shrugged.

"Seriously?"

"No, Barton," Tony sighed dramatically.

"Oh. You think this'll actually help you find Loki?"

"It might. It depends. He's probably not even going to come here, since we're kinda thinking he was kidnapped—don't ask. If he _is_ out on his own, and he _does _decide to come here, we'll probably still miss him. We don't have access to every corner of the damn planet. If Loki beams down in the middle of the Sahara, then we're probably going to miss him. If he marches into the UN or something, our odds are much better."

"Basically," Bruce summarized, "If we get lucky, we'll spot him before he's sitting in our kitchen and eating our food."

Clint frowned. "That sucks, guys." He wanted to know more about the 'kidnapped' thing—Natasha had mentioned it earlier—but decided to hold off on his questions for now. He'd rather ask Thor, actually, get the information straight from the source.

"Yeah," Tony agreed with Clint. "But, uh, do us a favor? If Fury asks...this is 100% fool proof and shit."

Not even sure he wanted to know _why _Tony was making this request, Clint pointed out, "Fury's not gonna ask. I'm not even supposed to be talking to you about this."

Tony raised an eyebrow. "And I'm sure he _really_ expected you to be a good little archer and do exactly as you were told. Like you do _all _the time."

Which, Clint had to admit, was a pretty damn good point.

"Fine, whatever. What game are you playing, anyway?"

Tony shrugged. "What can I say? I don't want another incident where there's a nuke heading towards Manhattan because someone overreacted. I want more control over this shit."

And Clint could appreciate that. _Although_, he reflected bitterly, _No one's accusing _Stark _of having 'control issues.'_

* * *

Clint hung out with the scientists for a while, attempting to decompress from what had been a very long, stupid, trying day. But being around Tony was hardly ever 'relaxing' (except when they were blowing things up) and Bruce's zen vibe could only do so much to mitigate Tony's frenetic energy, so Clint called it quits pretty early and headed towards bed, Tony's promise to find the missing USB drive echoing down the hall behind him.

First, though, he sought out Thor.

The demigod was in the living area, eating a disturbingly large pile of food and reading a book that, on closer examination, turned out to be a guidebook on North American etiquette.

Clint managed to suppress his snicker. Barely.

"Hey," Clint greeted him, when Thor showed no sign of having heard him enter the room.

"Good evening," Thor replied, setting his book down and looking up. "May I assist you?"

"Yeah, actually," Clint answered, deciding to just go for it and get it over with. "I was talking to Tony and Bruce. You think your brother's been kidnapped?" Despite his best efforts, his tone was still combative, far more so than it had been even a moment before.

Loki was something that Clint had not brought up with Thor yet. First, because Clint had no desire to talk about Loki at all, in fact, found it near impossible to do without panicking. Even now, he was struggling not to just walk away from what he'd started. Second, Thor's defense of his brother, even after everything that had happened, was always something that made Clint see red. And strong emotions of any sort were something that Clint needed to avoid; they brought on cravings, and God knows he didn't need any help in that department. But he wanted to know what was going on—since ignoring a problem never made it go away—and Fury sure as hell wasn't going to tell him what was happening. Best to get this information straight from the horse's mouth. Or something.

To Thor's credit, he did not bristle at Clint's tone—impressive, considering he'd frequently jumped down Tony's throat for less. But Thor understood that the archer had a far more intimate, personal grudge against his brother than the others did. And while the disrespect to one of his family rankled, he did not let it show. He answered evenly, "I do, yes."

Clint ground out, "Why?"

So Thor explained again what he'd told Tony and Bruce earlier, finishing with, "And if Loki promised his former allies the Tesseract, and failed to deliver it, I fear they may torture him...or worse to exact payment."

This declaration was met with silence—Clint could not muster up any kind of sympathy for Loki's supposed fate, but he was smart enough not to say as much. In fact, he couldn't think of anything appropriate to say at all. After several beats of silence, he just muttered, "Gotcha," turned, and left.

His abrupt departure was, he was sure, both rude and weird, but he needed to process without an audience, especially an audience that tended to leap to Loki's defense, even after everything he'd done. Which Clint didn't blame him for (_Oh really?_) but he did find it a little hard to swallow.

So he made his way to his room, musing idly on exactly how satisfying he found the prospect of Loki being tortured. When that bastard had weaseled his way out of prison—with ample help from Clint—he'd been...kind of upset. In a way, this seemed like justice. No, this _was _justice.

Personally, Clint thought they should just do nothing.

Not that Fury was going to ask _his_ opinion. The director had made _that _abundantly clear. He wasn't supposed to be involved with this—Fury didn't think Clint was ready to be working at all, let alone on something this...personal.

But there was still some small chance that Loki was free, was planning something, was out to get his revenge or something equally nefarious. And if Fury just expected Clint to sit by and let that happen? He was delusional. _No one _in his position could do that. This wasn't about trying to control what was happening, this was about taking care of unfinished business, about doing the right damn thing.

About doing what needed to be done.

With a sigh, Clint pushed open the door to his room and commenced getting ready for bed. At the very least, he needed to spend some time thinking about this—his recent snap decisions hadn't really been his best work. So he decided that he'd sleep on it and decide what he was going to do in the morning. Was he just going to sit out of this, like Fury wanted him to? Like he probably should? Or was he going to push his way right into the middle of this because he couldn't stand the thought of sitting idly by?

It was kind of cute, he would reflect later, that he'd thought he was going to have a choice about it.

* * *

Thanks for reading, following, favoriting, and reviewing, as always.

Sorry about the delay with this; I've been kind of uninspired to work on this story.

Please review. They are the only fleeting meaning in my barren waste of a life.


	5. Uninvited

**Warnings: some language, some melodrama, and altogether too much dialogue.**

**My beta, irite, is awesome. 'Nuff said.**

**I do not own The Avengers.**

* * *

Natasha returned from her mission a little bit less than two days after she left.

She landed at SHIELD's headquarters at 3:30 AM and promptly went for debriefing. Having just flown to and from the other side of the planet to talk with the leaders of several countries in Asia, her sleep schedule was so screwed up that debriefing at 3:30 AM didn't even faze her. Presumably, it didn't faze the other agents present, either. At least, Natasha didn't really care enough to notice if it did.

It wasn't until after 5:00 AM that she finally got to leave, and by then her jet lag was starting to catch up with her, she was irritated after answering an hour's worth of stupid questions, and she was starving to death.

All she wanted to do was go home, grab a sandwich or something, and sleep for twelve or so hours.

That wasn't going to happen, though.

It was just before 6:00 when she finally made it back to the Tower. Natasha slumped onto the elevator, leaning heavily against the back wall. Her orders were to go home and rest pending new information on either case she was currently working, and that was an order she intended to follow to a T. Fury was supposed to contact her later (after he'd gotten a chance to look at the notes from her debrief—and probably some goddamn sleep) to set up a meeting, but that wasn't going to happen at least until Rogers got home in twelve hours.

In the meantime, it was time to relax.

First, though, she needed food. When she got off the elevator, she headed immediately for the kitchen, not even stopping to drop her weapons or other equipment off. She _did _drop her bag in the living area as she breezed through, at least, because she figured it would only hinder her grand quest for breakfast.

As she walked towards the kitchen, she was surprised to see that the lights were on. That was strange; the residents of the Tower weren't really morning people—even Banner tended to sleep until after 7:00, and he was the closest thing to an 'early bird' they had. Still, it wasn't entirely unheard of for someone to rise early—Clint's sleep schedule was unpredictable, and it was possible that Tony hadn't even been to bed yet.

She expected one of them to be in the kitchen.

And she was right. It was Tony. But it wasn't _just _Tony. The billionaire was seated at the island in the center of the kitchen. There were two other people present, though, seated at the nearby kitchen table, and he was watching them intently.

One of them was Thor.

The other, of course (because why _wouldn't _it be?), was Loki.

Without even a second's hesitation, Natasha whipped out her gun and pointed it at Loki's forehead. "What the hell is he doing here?"

Loki smirked at her, and as she watched, he lazily took a bite from the heaping bowl of ice cream sitting in front of him. He swallowed and said, "Oh, not this again, this is getting so _boring_."

Tony looked between Loki and Natasha and sighed, rubbing the back of his head. "Um..."

Upon closer inspection (Natasha let her eyes dart to him momentarily before re-focusing on Loki) Tony looked like hell. His hair was sticking straight up, he had dark circles under his eyes, and it looked like there was a bruise forming on his right cheek.

None of that boded well.

Thor stood. "Agent Romanoff...Natasha...there is much to explain."

Natasha cocked her gun, still pointing it at the smirking Loki. "Yeah, no shit. So why don't you explain. Now."

Loki's smirk broke into a full-out grin.

Tony sighed again and began to speak.

* * *

When Loki showed up, of course no one was expecting it.

Tony and Bruce started work pretty early on Wednesday morning after a scant amount of sleep, and they decided to put their 'Loki alarm' on hold in favor of looking for Clint's missing files from psych.

"Because," Tony pointed out, and Bruce mostly agreed (because there was no point in _dis_agreeing with Tony, the physicist had learned), "There's no way in hell Loki is going to show up here."

As they worked, Clint was in and out of the lab throughout the day, providing any information he could.

It wasn't much, though, something Tony found fairly annoying.

"Why would someone steal your psych records, anyway?" Tony wanted to know, frustrated after four or so hours of fruitless digging. Sure, he was going to help his friend out, but he needed more information if he was ever actually going to accomplish something.

But all Clint would (or could) offer was a shrug. But then, at Tony's glare, he reluctantly continued, "I really have no idea. Fury thinks someone might be trying to use me to get to SHIELD, though."

"Why?" Bruce asked, patient as always. Tony appreciated his tact; if Tony had posed the same question, it would have been more like, 'why the fuck would he think something that paranoid?'

Bruce added, "Couldn't someone have just been, um, robbing you?"

There was a lengthy pause before Clint offered, "Maybe?"

"But you don't think so," Tony snapped, correctly interpreting Clint's hesitation. "Which means, for some reason or another, you think someone's out to get you. So, is that just healthy SHIELD-issue paranoia, or is there something else going on? I mean, anything you can tell us will help."

Clint frowned, clearly thinking quickly. After a moment, he admitted, "There might be something else going on."

"Okay, spill," Tony demanded. He wasn't very patient (with people, at least. He could work on a seemingly dead-end project for hours easily) and the idea of going back to blindly picking away at this until kingdom come was unbearable. "Come on, Legolas, I'm waiting. You're lucky I'm not charging for my time. 'Cause you sure as hell can't afford it."

"Okay, okay." Clint massaged his forehead briefly, then began to pace. Tony momentarily regretted pushing him, but brushed that aside as Clint began to speak. "The mission Fury sent Nat and me on yesterday...he had us investigating a disappearance."

"Yeah? Whose?" Tony tried to keep the irritation and impatience out of his voice, but mostly failed.

Clint smirked. "Easy there, Stark." But still he hesitated, and it wasn't until Tony opened his mouth to prod him along that Clint continued, "It was, um. My shrink. She went missing a couple of days ago. Her family filed a missing persons report on Sunday. There were signs of a struggle at her house...her laptop was missing, so Fury was thinking that her disappearance might be work related..."

Tony considered for a minute. "So, your shrink goes missing, then your psych records go missing. And you guys think that means...what, exactly?" He had his own conclusions, yeah, but wanted to know what the 'official story' was.

"Not sure," Clint answered. "But it seems like it's kind of related to me. So Fury's gone all stick-up-his-ass, and he's probably right. I mean, there's no such thing as coincidence when you work for SHIELD."

It was a legitimate point. But there was some useful information in all of this. "Paquette, right? Her laptop was missing?" Tony glanced at Bruce. "That would've been good to know four hours ago, hey?"

Bruce gave a helpless half-shrug, like he was too polite to agree openly with Tony but secretly did anyway. "I guess? I mean, if it has anti-theft software, I'm sure SHIELD's already traced it, that's the first thing they'd do—"

"True, but even if it doesn't have that kind of software, we can probably work something—"

"Yeah, right, that's not possible, Tony. You can't—"

"Have faith, Banner. I'm a genius, I do what I want. Including re-writing the laws of computer science." He turned to Clint. "Don't suppose you have the serial number off her laptop?" Clint shook his head, slightly dazed at the turn the conversation had taken. "All right then, you can go do whatever it is you have planned for the day. When we find something, we'll let you know." Completely dismissing Clint, Tony turned to Bruce to lay out his plans for hacking SHIELD's IT department and purchasing department to find out more about Sam's computer.

"This isn't exactly helpful," Clint pointed out after a moment, looking between the two scientists, clearly annoyed at their exchange. "You're supposed to be looking for my records, not her laptop."

Tony waved him off, kind of surprised he was still there. "Isn't it obvious? If the two occurrences are connected, which they clearly are, then where you find one, you'll find the other. More than likely. Seems like a pretty good start, anyway." He didn't understand _why _SHIELD couldn't just think of these things on their own. "So, shoo. Unless you have something else really useful you want to confess? Like, the guy who robbed you didn't happen to drop his ID or something?" He knew he was being a bit of a jackass, but he'd had a rough morning so far—he was sleep deprived, still had a lot of work to do—and now that he had a lead, well, he wanted to figure this out as fast as he could. As much as Tony hated to admit it, Fury was probably right—whoever was doing this seemed to be targeting Clint, and the faster they found out who was behind this shit, the better.

With a final irritated huff, Clint stalked from the lab.

Once they lifted some relevant information from SHIELD, finding Paquette's missing laptop was fairly easy. Well, easy enough for a pair of geniuses with an unlimited supply of technology not available on the market yet. By midnight, they'd managed to triangulate a location, and Tony called Clint back down to the lab.

Clint made his way down to the lab as quickly as he could upon receiving his summons, and Tony wasted no time, shoving a set of coordinates in his hand with a cheery, "Here you go, Katniss, we found what's-her-face's laptop. Don't ask how."

That worked for Clint—he had no interest in hearing whatever long, complicated way they'd gone about doing whatever it was they'd done. He just took the offered piece of paper and shoved it in his pocket. "Thanks. I really appreciate it." 'Appreciate' was the understatement of the year, but gushing thanks wasn't really his style. So with that, he turned to head back upstairs.

Tony asked his retreating back, incredulous, "Is that it?"

Clint turned back, shrugging. "Well, I need to talk to Fury before I can do anything, so..." He wasn't about to do something as stupid as striking off on his own, not right now. That was the sort of shit that got him into trouble, the sort of shit that he knew he needed to stop doing. After all, he needed to trust that other people _could _be trusted, that he didn't need to try and run everything on his own.

"You're serious?" Tony asked, still incredulous. "You're actually..."

"Trying to make some better fucking choices, yeah," Clint snarked. "So could you maybe stop being such an asshole about it?"

"Me? Stop being an asshole? Where's the fun in that—"

Bruce shot a quick look between the two of them, before interrupting loudly, "It's late. We've been down here for sixteen hours. Why don't we call it a night, Tony, get back to this tomorrow?"

Tony shook his head, though. "Can't. Need to put some work into the facial recognition software. But, hey," he offered, "You two could get out of here. I mean, I've been kind of commandeering your life for the last couple of days, Bruce, wouldn't blame you if you needed some time off."

Bruce considered Tony's offer, clearly torn. After a moment, he said, "Would you mind?"

"Nah." Tony knew that not everyone found 16-hour coding marathons to be a fun, fulfilling experience. Even he was getting tired, honestly. "Get some rest. Hell, I'm probably just going to work on this for an hour or so. Just so I can say I did in case someone asks." He gave a weary grin, stiffening his jaw when a yawn threatened to escape.

"Well...when you put it that way, I can go for another hour..." Bruce interrupted himself with a huge yawn that he didn't bother to hide. "Or maybe I _should _just get some rest."

"Yeah, do that," Tony advised. "Lack of sleep makes people cranky, you know, and no one likes you when you're cranky."

Clint snorted, and Bruce shot Tony a glare. But then he smiled and asked, "Same time tomorrow?"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Eight AM sharp. Bring coffee."

"I don't drink—"

"Bring coffee _for me_."

"Um, sure thing, Tony," Bruce agreed hastily, and he finally slipped out of the lab, Clint close behind him.

Alone again, Tony settled in for at least another hour or two of work. What he was doing wasn't exactly complicated, just kind of time-consuming, so he turned his music back up and dove into his project.

'An hour or two' turned pretty quickly into three, though, and probably would have turned into more, except just after 3:00 AM JARVIS muted Tony's music and informed him, "There is an unauthorized individual on this floor, sir."

"...Huh?" Tony, of course, hadn't been listening, too tired and involved in the work he was doing.

"There is an unauthorized individual on this floor, sir," JARVIS repeated patiently.

Tony groaned. He knew what it was. This happened three or four times a month. The cleaning staff for the building wasn't always the best about adhering to the esoteric security protocols, and occasionally one of them set off the system. After the third time it had happened, Tony had done away with the shrieking alarm in favor of just having JARVIS tell him when someone ended up somewhere they didn't belong.

Still, it merited investigation. If nothing else, he had to make sure that no one wandered into Bruce's lab and messed with whatever strange things the physicist was doing over there. So Tony rolled his chair back and stood. Stretching, he made his way out into the hall.

It was immediately apparent that the culprit was _not_ a member of the cleaning staff, despite the fact that he was trying to get into one of the many closets on the floor. The clothes kind of gave it away—those were definitely _not _standard-issue coveralls.

"Fuck," Tony muttered, too surprised by what he was seeing to even reach for his bracelets.

Loki looked up from the door he'd been trying to pry open. "Ah. Stark. I had hoped I would find you here."

Tony didn't want to look too far into that. He didn't want to think too hard about any of this, because if he realized how surreal it was, chances were pretty good he'd just launch head-first into sleep-deprived insanity. So he just answered probably more calmly than the situation merited, "Probably not going to find anything in there, though. That's a utility closet."

Loki dropped his hands to his sides. "Well. Location spells aren't perfect. I was doing the best I could. Now, perhaps you could take me to my 'brother?'"

Tony really admired the way that Loki didn't address any of the shit that had gone on between them in the past—like the megalomaniacal, world-conquering thing. The throwing-Tony-out-a-window thing. No, he just acted like everything was peachy, like he _wasn't _a war criminal, wasn't a manipulative creep at the top of SHIELD's Most-Wanted list. That kind of acting took balls, and Tony found himself momentarily awed.

He got over it pretty quickly, though, his mistrust and anger beginning to kick in finally. "Um, I think not, Princess Pandemonium. How about you just get the fuck out of my building and fly back to wherever you came from?"

"I'm afraid that's not an option," Loki said, and he looked truly regretful, all sad, huge eyes. "Asgard is no longer safe for me, you see. Now, I really would like to speak to Thor."

Tony had no idea what to do with this situation. Part of him was convinced the second he turned his back that Loki was going to defenestrate him or worse, and that was, frankly, terrifying. Another part of him wanted to get into the suit and go head to head with Loki, since he hadn't gotten a chance yet. But mostly?

He wanted this whole thing to go away. So he asked, "If I bring you to Thor...are you going to leave?"

The hope in his voice was entirely apparent, and Loki heard it. He smirked. "I am afraid not. I am seeking asylum, you see. Protection."

"Oh, you've gotta be kidding me!" Tony exclaimed, resisting the urge to stamp one of his feet like a frustrated toddler. "Why the _hell_ would _anyone _here protect you?"

Loki just raised an elegant eyebrow. "I would have this conversation with Thor, if you would be so kind."

Tony restrained himself—barely—from punching Loki right in his smirking mouth. Instead, he activated his bracelets, calling the suit to him. Loki gave a melodramatic sigh as Tony was encased in metal. When the suit was assembled, he asked, "Are you quite done?"

"I don't trust you," Tony replied by way of answer, his voice echoing through the outer speakers of the suit. "But if you're not leaving 'til you get what you want, then, faster I give you what you want, faster you get out of here, yeah? So come on, Reindeer Games." The nickname wasn't appropriate—Loki wasn't wearing his iconic helmet—but Tony wasn't really on his game at the moment. "JARVIS, get Thor up, tell him we need to talk."

"Of course, sir. Shall I rouse the others as well?"

Tony considered a moment before deciding, "No. Well. Yeah. No. Get Bruce. But, um," he'd realized suddenly the extent of the clusterfuck they had on their hands, realized _why _this might be a problem. "I'll tell Barton myself."

With that, he led Loki towards the elevator, one hand gesturing and the other pointed at the trickster. "Try any funny shit and I'll blast you through a wall."

"Noted, Stark. Now, to my dear brother, please."

* * *

Clint tended to sleep like shit, always had, even before the whole losing-his-mind-to-Loki thing. He either did it too much or not at all, and tonight it seemed like it was going to be a 'not at all' sort of night. After he'd left the lab, he'd considered calling Fury to tell him what he had. But, contrary to popular belief, the director _did _sleep. Did, in fact, go home on occasion. He certainly wouldn't want to hear from Clint, who'd been expressly told to go home and do nothing until he had new orders.

With that in mind, Clint had decided to head to bed, but all he'd accomplished was three hours of tossing and turning, his mind churning, refusing to shut off. Mostly, he was thinking about the case—what did it mean, that Sam's laptop was where it was? What was happening to her? _Should _he act now? These few hours could be the difference between life and death—although that was unlikely. If she hadn't been killed immediately after abduction, she probably wasn't going to be killed in the next eight hours. Tortured, maybe, but not killed.

And Clint found it probably more difficult than he should have to get upset about that. She'd been a pain in his ass for months now.

_And especially for the last forty-eight hours._

A smaller part of his mind was occupied with the 'Loki problem.' He'd spent most of the day keeping himself occupied, trying not to dwell on the fact that the person who had more or less destroyed him was free and floating around the universe somewhere. And Clint was mostly successful in his not-thinking endeavor...at least until he'd started trying to sleep. Sleep tended to be stressful on its own—he still didn't like doing it, didn't like giving up control of his own body—and while he was usually able to get past that, any other stress from the day just compounded it. And those were the nights he got no sleep at all.

So, three hours into attempting to sleep, he was actually relieved when someone started pounding on his door. "Hey, Barton, rise and shine!"

It was Tony. Clint threw his covers back and hauled himself out of bed. He made his way to the door and opened it, almost smiling at the distraction. "Morning, Stark. What's up?" Grateful as he was, a 3 AM wakeup call was nonetheless concerning. "Are we under attack? On fire? Um..." he tried to think of what other catastrophe could be befalling them.

Tony—out of the suit again at this point—wasn't smiling, though, didn't look amused in the least. In fact he was, for once, completely serious. And...silent.

And that was concerning. "Tony?"

Tony shook himself from his reverie. "Sorry. Uh..." he looked at Clint's attire—just pajama pants—and advised, "You might want to get dressed. We...have a visitor."

Clint turned and, glancing around his room, picked up the first t-shirt he could find. He shrugged it on, then tugged a pair of sneakers on over his bare feet. Whoever visited at 3:00 in the morning couldn't expect high fashion. Turning back to Tony, he asked, "Who's visiting? In the middle of the night?" This was strange, but given how completely bizarre most of their lives were, it wasn't strange enough to raise too many red flags. More alarming was Tony's rigid, serious demeanor. Because he'd _never _seen the billionaire serious unless it was about either his morning coffee or booze.

Clint tried to brush past Tony and into the hall. But Tony stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. "Barton. Clint. It's." He hesitated, clearly reluctant to speak. But then he clenched his jaw briefly, and blurted out, "It's Loki. Loki's here."

Obviously, Tony was fucking with him. Even if the joke was in terrible taste, Tony had been known to be completely tactless. "Funny, Stark. Now really, who is it?" As glad as he was to not be alone with his increasingly depressing thoughts, Clint didn't want to deal with Tony's bullshit at 3 in the morning.

"Loki," Tony insisted. "He showed up outside my lab, looking for his brother. He says he needs protection or something—"

"No," Clint interrupted. "No. Stark. That's not even _funny_, why the hell would you say that?"

"Because it's _true_, Barton. He's in the kitchen—"

Clint felt his shoulders stiffen. Tony couldn't be serious. Could he? But he _looked _serious. He looked 100% not-fucking-around, completely dead serious. Clint choked out, "In the kitchen?"

Loki. In the fucking _kitchen_. Just...it was inconceivable. He couldn't wrap his mind around it, couldn't process it, couldn't fucking _breathe _around the tightening muscles in his chest. That monster, here. Like he _deserved _protection, like he deserved _anything _from them.

And suddenly, his clenched muscles relaxed. Because Clint knew _exactly _what Loki deserved. He twisted his arm out of Tony's grip and ducked back into his room. He dug around through the piles of dirty laundry and other clutter until he found what he was looking for.

It wasn't his bow (that was in his locker at SHIELD...where all his weapons were _supposed _to be) but the small, black handgun would do.

Tony saw what Clint had in his hand. "Woah there, kiddo. Chill out! That's not—"

Clint pushed Tony roughly out of the way, but Tony snagged his shirt as he brushed past and pushed Clint against the wall, trying to get him to drop the gun. "Stop. You're not thinking, this isn't something you want to do—"

In no mood to listen (because this _was _something he wanted to do, very much so), Clint threw his elbow up as hard as he could. It caught Tony under his right eye, and Tony fell to his knees, releasing his grip on Clint's shirt as he went down. Clint stepped indifferently over him and headed towards the kitchen.

He stopped just outside the door, listening. He could hear voices—quiet, muttering—but he couldn't make out who they belonged to. Behind him, he could hear Tony scrambling back to his feet. He needed to act before Tony could get out a warning, so he stepped into the kitchen, gun raised.

Bruce was sitting at the island in the middle of the kitchen, looking at the two figures seated at the nearby table. Thor had his back to the door, but Loki...Loki was facing him.

And _smiling_.

They faced off for less than a second. Then, Loki spoke. "Well, well. Agent Barton. How nice it is—"

Clint fired.

Lightning-fast, Loki dropped to the floor, dodging the bullet. A moment later, Thor was on his feet facing Clint, pinning Clint's arms down to his side. "Barton! You must listen! My brother intends you no harm—"

"Fuck that!" Clint snarled. Everything he'd been working towards—trusting others, thinking before acting, willingly relinquishing control—was, in this moment, forgotten. All he could think about was _that bastard_, about how Loki had _used_ him, broken him, left him to try to pick up the pieces on his own. And now Loki was sitting in his _kitchen _and eating his _food_ and all of these people were apparently _okay _with this.

"Listen, Clint," Bruce said, standing, approaching slowly, his hands raised. "I know this isn't, um, ideal, but—"

Clint twisted his shoulders, slipping from Thor's grip. He backed away until the wall was against his back. Across the room, Loki was getting to his feet, brushing his hands off, chuckling. "Oh, Barton, _that_ was _exhilarating_—"

Clint raised the gun again.

"Damn it! No more shooting in my kitchen!" Tony yelled, harried, pushing Thor out of the way. "Jesus. And you," he gestured at Thor, "Keep your fucking brother quiet. Or I will. And I won't be nice about it."

Everyone faced off for a moment. Thor went to stand next to Loki, arms crossed across his chest. He glared down at his brother, who remained, thankfully, silent.

Clint lowered the gun, dropping his hands to his sides. As he completely slumped, the gun fell from his hand, dropping to the floor and skidding out of the way. Suddenly, he was exhausted. But he couldn't do this. Couldn't deal with this. Not here, at least. Not in the same fucking room as Loki. Or building.

_Fuck_.

Abruptly, he turned and, shoving Tony and Bruce out of his way, stalked towards the elevator.

* * *

"And we've been more or less sitting here since," Tony finished. "Bruce followed Clint on his magical mission to God-knows-where, and, well, we haven't heard from either of them. It's only been a couple of hours, though..." Clearly, he was worried, despite his attempt at flippancy.

Natasha lowered her gun and pulled out her cell phone. "Does Fury know he's here?" She gestured vaguely towards Loki with the hand that still held her gun.

"We have told no one," Thor said. "To be quite honest, we were not sure how to proceed. We cannot be certain that my brother would not come to harm if we told others of his location...including Fury."

Natasha snorted. "Yeah. Wonder why that might be an issue." She sighed. "We need to tell Fury. We need to find Clint. We need..." there was about a thousand things they needed to do, honestly, and none of them seemed like they were going to be easy.

Natasha wondered if she was ever going to get breakfast.

* * *

**Thanks for reading!**

**Someday, all of this might make sense. Might. We'll see. **

**Please review; each review causes flowers and butterflies to sprout up in the otherwise dismal landscape of my bleak, meaningless life.**


	6. Stumbling

**Warnings: mentions of drug use, angst, colorful language, Loki.**

**My beta, irite, is pretty much amazing and helps me keep track of Thor. Who vanishes. Frequently.**

**I do not own The Avengers.**

* * *

Clint couldn't really ignore the fact that Banner—he'd stopped being 'Bruce' about the time he'd defended Loki—was following him, despite his best efforts.

The physicist caught up to him while he was waiting for the elevator, but Clint didn't speak to him. He was still trying to process, trying to make sense of seeing Loki—that bastard—sitting in _his _kitchen, enjoying a meal, completely at ease. Like he'd been _invited_.

Fuck, he might as well have been, for all the reaction his appearance was having. All of the people who were _supposed_ to be protecting the world from that psycho were just sitting around, doing _nothing_. Apparently, none of them had any intention of ever actually _doing anything _about the fact that Loki—who'd been responsible for all kinds of death and destruction, who'd tried to take over the damn world for God's sake—was now ready to move into the Tower and live happily amongst them.

And they all had no intention of letting Clint do anything about it, either.

That made him see red.

Or maybe that was just the blind panic of, well, having to see Loki.

_Fuck that. And fuck him. And fuck them_.

It was easier to be angry than to engage in deep, meaningful self-analysis. Anger was safe. Clint could do anger. And if he stayed good and pissed off at his so-called teammates, he wouldn't have to think about Loki too much at all.

It was a terrible plan, but it was the only one he had.

Wisely—probably sensing the tension rolling off the archer in waves—as they waited for the elevator, Banner did not attempt to engage Clint in conversation. In fact, they rode down to the garage in total silence.

Clint maintained his efforts and tried _very _hard to ignore the fact that Banner was following him, but when he snagged the keys for one of Tony's cars and unlocked the damn thing, it was really hard to ignore Banner silently sliding into the passenger's seat.

Momentarily, Clint considered physically removing him from the vehicle—he certainly wasn't going to ask Banner to get the fuck out; that would involve _speaking_, and Clint didn't think he had the capability for that right now. He definitely had the capability to dump Banner out on his ass, though.

Although it did seem rude.

He wrestled with himself about it, about whether or not that level of rudeness was justified in this situation (and he was inclined to believe it _was_, because _what the fuck were they thinking_) and while he was deliberating, Banner buckled up, cementing his place in this little road trip.

Whatever.

Clint rolled his eyes and jammed the key in the ignition. He turned the engine over and peeled out of the garage, tires squealing.

It was a satisfying sound.

They drove in silence for a good two blocks before Clint flicked the radio on, changing the station from Tony's classic rock to his preferred pop. Banner looked pained, but didn't say anything about it. Instead, he cast a quick sideways glance at Clint and broke the silence, asking, "So, um. Where are we going?"

Clint didn't answer—he didn't see why he should have to answer to anyone, to any of them. Banner was in on the 'Let's Welcome Loki to Earth' plan, and that put him pretty solidly on Clint's shit list. He'd gotten in the damn car on his own, Clint sure as hell hadn't forced him to come along. Banner could just chill the fuck out and deal with it.

And besides, Banner really wasn't going to like this plan. If you could call it a 'plan.' In fact, a few moments of meaningful self-analysis might reveal that this 'plan' was really more of a...frantic, violent reaction to extreme stimuli.

But Clint wasn't engaging in self-analysis at the moment.

So he wasn't going to acknowledge that he was mere moments away from panic, was on a path that could quite likely have him doing something very, very stupid, very, very soon.

And he wasn't going to acknowledge that Banner had spoken.

So he weaved through the streets of New York, making his way back towards a destination he had not visited in just over three months almost instinctively, on autopilot.

Home.

SHIELD issued all of its field agents apartments as part of their contracts. Since most of the agents were mobile and traveled a lot, the apartments were mostly used as storage space, somewhere to put the 'stuff' accrued during missions. Almost no one actually _lived _in them, instead preferring to find their own (better) accommodations.

Clint, though, had actually lived there. Nat had, too. Neither of them had been particular about where they lived, since they both came from backgrounds where having a roof over their heads and a permanent mailing address was novel enough that they weren't picky about the details. They didn't mind that the apartments sucked. Hadn't even really noticed it, in fact, and so they'd turned down Tony's offer of better housing for several months.

The only reason that Clint had moved into the Tower was, well, the whole drug addiction thing. When he'd finally reached out for help, Nat had decided that living somewhere he could be monitored more closely would be beneficial to the process. And although she would never admit it, he suspected she felt that the added support of living with three (and then four) other people was good. For him, and for her.

She'd been right, of course, and three months later, Clint knew that he was still benefiting from the team living arrangement.

At least, he had been until they'd decided to welcome motherfucking Loki into the mix.

So Clint had, very rationally and maturely, decided it was time to go home. To go to what _used _to be home, anyway.

There was no Loki there, for one, and that was fucking wonderful.

And, well...there were other reasons.

_Absolutely fucking not_. _Don't even _think _like that._

_Right. Why the fuck _else _would you be doing this_?

Clint didn't dignify himself with a response.

Banner took being ignored well, and didn't say another word until after Clint had pulled into the parking lot and cut the engine off.

"Where are we?"

Clint still didn't answer. Instead, he stiffly got out of the car, snatching the keys out of the ignition and slamming the door behind him. He started striding towards the building, and Banner followed.

_This_, Clint realized, _is not going to fucking work_.

Stopping abruptly, Clint whirled around to face the physicist trailing hesitantly behind him. Thrusting the keys to the car roughly into Bruce's chest, Clint snarled, "Here. Go. I'm staying here tonight. Tell the others whatever. But I'm not going back there. Not while—" he cut himself off, unwilling to finish the sentence.

He didn't need to finish the sentence for Banner to get the point. And amazingly, he didn't object. He just took the keys, peering over his glasses at Clint. "Sure. Of course. But only if you can tell me that you're going to be okay."

There was always a catch. Still, Clint managed a terse, "I'll be fine." And he was going to be. Soon. He'd be fine. He just needed to...

Banner was shaking his head, though. "I don't believe that. I think—"

"I don't give a _shit_ what you think," Clint informed him coldly. As far as he was concerned, _all_ of them—Stark, Banner, Thor—had, by letting Loki waltz into their lives—completely lost any right to even _pretend _to give a shit. And he couldn't stomach that shit right now. Not while it was so raw.

Banner looked surprised at Clint's angry tone, but before he could answer, Clint turned and stalked into the building.

He was done. It was almost four in the fucking morning, and he was _done_.

Banner didn't follow him.

Clint made his way into his old apartment, stopping in the doorway momentarily to look around. Then, he moved through the small space, giving everything a cursory inspection. The apartment looked exactly the same as it had the last time he'd been here. Well, someone had cleaned up the puke that had been in the bedroom, but otherwise nothing had been moved.

That was good.

Standing in the middle of his bedroom, he took a few deep breaths before casting a longing look at the dusty bed.

God, he wanted to sleep for a fucking year. Just forget all this shit.

That wasn't going to happen, though.

But he could try. Fucking stupid optimistic bullshit, probably but it was worth a shot. That's what all of this 'recovery' shit was, trying to get back to normal, right, and normal people were sleeping at four in the morning. Clint sighed and threw himself on the bed, ignoring the cloud of dust that puffed into existence, the musty smell. He closed his eyes.

And became, rather unsurprisingly, immediately aware of the knot of tension in his stomach, of the headache spreading behind his eyes. Of how his heart was starting to hammer in his chest, of the cold sweat springing up at his palms.

_Shit_. _Shit, shit, shit. This is _not _happening. Not right now. _

_So much for 'normal.'_

Clint sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Hunched over, he rested his head in one palm for a couple of heartbeats, torn. But then he thought of Loki, smirking at him, so damn _self-satisfied_ so _pleased _with himself, and all the shit that had been piling up from the last couple of days crashed over him. He forgot everything Sam had tried to teach him, all the coping mechanisms he was supposed to call upon in moments like this, and he stood and crossed the room in two steps. He walked into his bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet.

It was empty.

Clint stared at the empty shelves for almost five seconds before he abruptly turned and went back into the bedroom. He made his way over to his dresser and wrenched open the middle drawer.

It was still home to a couple of discarded black t-shirts and an errant pair of black boxers, and Clint dug through the pile of clothes frantically. But what he was looking for wasn't there.

And now it was starting to click. He'd thought nothing had been moved, but of _course _stuff had been moved. Nat had been here. She'd collected most of his stuff for him while he was in the hospital, had moved most of this clothes and sparse personal belongings to the Tower.

She'd probably seen fit to remove some _other _stuff that he'd had lying around the place.

Damn her.

Frustrated, Clint tried to slam the drawer back into the dresser, but it was jammed, and after pushing on it two or three times, he instead ripped it out completely and heaved it across the room.

It landed in the corner with a satisfying thud, spilling its contents across the floor, and Clint stood, fists clenched at his side, panting and glaring at it, daring it to move.

After a moment, all the tension melted out of his body and he maneuvered so that he could flop bonelessly onto his bed.

_Stellar fucking work there, Barton. Doing a fantastic job at this shit. Two bad days and you practically relapse, yeah, you've really got a handle on this shit._

He glared up at the ceiling, thinking. He was pissed off, and frustrated, and exhausted. Mostly pissed off. Yeah, he could go score but it'd been over three months and he didn't know if he could still get the shit where he'd been getting it, or if he'd have to find someone else, and—

_You haven't actually fucked up yet._

That stopped his train of thought abruptly. Because it was true. He _hadn't_. He'd gotten really, really close but Nat—even if she wasn't there—had saved his ass (again) and so he _hadn't fucked up yet._

He didn't have to.

Even if it would be easy, even if he wanted to, if he wanted it _desperately_. He was still clean.

And already thinking better than he had been sixty seconds ago.

_Okay, just—_

He heard a tentative knock at his door.

_What the hell?_

Sitting up again, Clint ran a sweaty hand through his hair, heedless of how it made it stick up. He stood and made his way through the darkened apartment to the front door and cracked it open just enough to see who was on the other side.

It was Banner. And he launched immediately into some explanation of how he'd gotten the right apartment number on his phone—apparently JARVIS could just _do _that kind of shit—and how he thought it would be better if Clint wasn't alone at the moment, and he was sorry about Loki, that was really awful and...

Clint listened to his tirade—he sounded more like Stark, at the moment, apparently the billionaire's frenetic energy was contagious—in silence, too dazed to do much else. When Banner finally stopped, Clint wordlessly opened the door all the way and stepped to the side, letting the physicist enter.

Apparently back to his awkward self, Banner shuffled in. "So, um, are you all right? 'Cause, uh, you don't look too good."

Clint nodded, then shook his head. Then shrugged. He wasn't all the way back to 'stable' yet, but he was getting there.

Banner nodded. "Yeah, that seems about right." He hesitated, then offered, "Do you want me to tell you what I know about Loki?"

That was easier to answer definitively. "Fucking right I do."

"I don't know much," Banner hedged, seemingly trying to back out of what he'd started. "Just what I overheard when he was talking to Thor."

Clint shrugged. Fury didn't want him involved with this, he'd made that abundantly clear. But all that shit went out the window when Loki had showed up in his kitchen. So he'd take whatever information he could get at this point. "Whatever you have is good, doc."

* * *

Natasha's first order of business after hearing their story was to call Clint, but of course he didn't have his phone with him—he had, according to Tony, vacated the premises wearing his pajamas. So her next order of business had been to call Bruce. He hadn't answered, either, but a few minutes after she hung up, she got a text message from him telling her that everything was fine.

Not exactly the level of reassurance she was looking for, but she'd take it.

Then she'd returned to the kitchen. Loki and Thor were still there, Thor looming menacingly over his brother as Loki tucked into what had to be a second bowl of ice cream.

Asshole. Why did _he _get to have breakfast?

Natasha sighed. She had no idea what to do about this. And Steve wasn't around for her to push this sort of team-leader shit off on him, wasn't going to be back for hours. They didn't really have a hierarchy as a team past 'Steve's in charge,' and since this was going to involve SHIELD, the others were looking to her for guidance.

She had half a mind to turn this over to Stark—who'd love being put in charge—but that seemed like a recipe for unmitigated disaster. And Natasha was more responsible than that.

As if summoned by her thoughts, the billionaire wandered back into the kitchen. He took in Loki's refilled ice cream bowl and grumbled, "Jesus, he's going to eat me out of house and home."

Loki set his spoon down and daintily wiped his mouth with a nearby paper towel. "My apologies, Stark. Magic of the magnitude I have been employing is quite taxing, and rations have been short of late." He resumed eating with gusto.

Tony glared at him, even though he hadn't said anything that strictly merited it. Had, in fact, been quite polite. Natasha assumed Tony felt the same way she did—by his very presence, Loki deserved to be glared at. And probably much, much worse, but that wasn't her call to make.

Sauntering casually towards the coffee machine, Tony said, "Yeah, maybe you could share a little bit more about that. What the hell _have _you been doing since you left Asgard?" He poured himself a cup and downed half of it in one gulp.

Annoyed, Loki set his spoon down again. "I have discussed this with my brother. I do not see why it is your business—"

"That's not gonna work, Loki," Natasha interrupted him. As if. "You want our protection, you're going to have to be a little more up front."

Loki looked like he very much wanted to say something caustic, but Thor silenced him with a hand on his shoulder. He said, "My brother will be more than happy," his fingers tightened noticeably on Loki's arm, "to regale you of his trials, but perhaps we should wait until we are all present?"

Natasha shook her head. "Rogers isn't due back for twelve hours." She didn't say anything about Bruce or Clint. Bruce could be filled in later; and Clint, well, Clint was a problem on his own. She couldn't think about that now, though. Definitively, she said, "We're doing this. But it can wait 'til we're telling Fury. Which we should probably do...now. It's after 7:00; he should be in the office by now." He really did hardly ever leave.

Tony, who'd been looking sadly into his empty coffee cup, snapped into action. "Yeah. I was thinking video conference. Don't wanna parade that psycho," he gestured towards Loki, who looked sour at the epithet, "Through the middle of New York. Might cause panic or something. I'll get it set up in my lab." He didn't wait for affirmation before he bounced out of the room.

Disturbed by the sheer amount of energy he seemed to have—it had to be the caffeine; he hadn't been to sleep yet—Natasha nodded to Thor. "Meet us downstairs in fifteen minutes?"

"Of course," he agreed, letting his hand drop from Loki's shoulder.

Natasha turned to leave, but then turned back and grabbed most of the contents of the fruit bowl on the counter. She had fifteen minutes 'til the impromptu meeting, she was going to make the most of it.

Thirteen minutes later, freshly showered and munching on her second apple, Natasha stopped by the kitchen for the largest cup of coffee she could find. Then she headed down towards Tony's lab.

The billionaire was doing his best to prevent both Thor and Loki from touching anything, and Natasha felt just a _little _bit bad for leaving him to deal with the demigods on his own. It passed pretty quickly, though; she was too tired for sympathy.

When she entered, Tony looked up at her expectantly. "I figured we could do this the official way and use your protocol thingies."

Natasha nodded—it was a good point. Unauthorized communication was probably just going to grate on Fury's nerves. "You guys all ready for this? Maybe Loki could stand off screen?"

Thor and Loki stepped off to the side, and Tony followed a moment later with a sheepish shrug.

With a sigh, Natasha set her coffee down and input the relevant information quickly, then stepped back so Fury would be able to see her.

He appeared on screen a moment later. "Agent Romanoff. As I recall, your orders were to rest pending _new _orders. Not to call me from Stark's damn lab at the earliest possible moment."

"Yes, sir," Natasha agreed, wishing desperately that she'd actually gotten to rest. "But something's come up."

"Oh?" The increased tension in the director's shoulders exposed the lie of his innocently curious tone.

"Yes, sir." Natasha shifted her weight between her feet and looked up. "Sir, Loki arrived at the Tower around 3:00 this morning. He's been detained." 'Detained' wasn't quite the right word—Loki was staying on his own volition—but it sounded good.

Fury took this information remarkably well. "And _why _is SHIELD's #1 Most Wanted paying Stark a social visit?"

"This is hardly a social visit, director," Loki said smoothly, stepping into the frame. Thor followed him closely, unwilling to let Loki more than an arm's length away.

Natasha appreciated his vigilance, even if she wasn't sure how useful it would be if Loki decided to make a break for it. And she really wished he'd step up here and help manage his brother, but then...he'd never really had success with that. Maybe he was finally figuring out that he couldn't.

"Yeah, he seems real 'detained,' Romanoff," Fury growled, clearly annoyed. "What the hell is he doing here?"

Natasha sighed. "He's looking for protection. It's probably best to let him explain the specifics, sir." A good answer that let her cover up the fact that she hadn't quite gotten around to interrogating the 'prisoner' yet.

"Right." Fury obviously wasn't pleased, but it was pretty clear that Loki hadn't caused any trouble yet—at least, none that anyone knew about—and if he was willing to give up any information, Natasha knew that Fury wasn't going to object. He looked from Natasha to Loki. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Loki cleared his throat and looked down his nose at the director, as much as he could manage from his current vantage point. It wasn't much, but the intent was clear. "Well, director, you see, this all began when I was in my rooms at the palace, minding my own business, enjoying my...freedom," he paused to smirk, clearly taunting Fury—his freedom, after all, was a massive slap in the face to everyone involved on the Earth end of things. When Fury clenched his jaw, Loki continued jovially, "I was reading a particularly enlightening tome about, well, that's a boring detail I'm sure you don't need. I was quite engrossed in it when I heard footsteps approaching my chambers. I was immediately on guard."

Thor shifted his weight, moving almost imperceptibly closer to Loki, but he still did not speak.

Tony did. "Oh, why's that?" he interjected from where he was sitting on the other side of the room, having fulfilled his quota of respectful listening for the day. He hopped up and walked over to the others. "What could you _possibly _have to worry about, after the shit you pulled?"

Dryly, Loki answered, "Yes, well, I do seem to be gaining admirers, don't I? But, you see, it was the middle of the night. And I am not particularly inundated with visitors during the daylight hours, so for anyone to come at that hour was entirely unusual. I cast a quick spell of invisibility—"

"Woah, you can do that?" Tony interjected. "Shit!"

This time, Fury barked at him, "Shut it, Stark, and let him finish."

Loki straightened his already-straightened clothes. "Invisibility is child's play. I was thus obscured from view when they came bursting into my chambers and began tearing the place apart—"

Fury interrupted, "_Who_?"

Quizzically, Loki raised an eyebrow. "I'm sorry?"

Natasha knew, then, that doing this via video call had been the right choice—Fury looked as though he'd like nothing more than to have his hands around Loki's neck. "Who. The fuck. Was it?"

"Ah. I apologize, I assumed it was obvious. Chitauri, of course. Sent by their master."

Here, Thor stepped in. "If what my brother says it true, they must possess some kind of powerful sorcery to get past the guards. The palace is well protected, and such an intrusion would require great skill in the magic arts."

"Or some kind of tech," Tony mused. "From what I saw, the Chitauri were like, half robot. I wonder if—"

This time, Loki interrupted _him_. "I knew, then, that my time was up. I of course knew that they would come for me eventually—the consequences for failure had been made abundantly clear during our earlier negotiations, I assure you—but I had rather hoped that they would take a while longer about it. I was _so _enjoying myself."

He gave a wistful sigh and went on, "I was rather short on time, you see, so I had to make a quick escape. As quick as I could manage, anyway...moving between realms is rather complicated. I didn't have time to inform anyone of my plight before fleeing." He shrugged. "Not that many of Asgard's _upstanding _citizens would have been particularly distraught to discover the situation. Or inclined to act."

He looked legitimately, exaggeratedly saddened by this, but Natasha wasn't feeling sympathetic. She snorted. "Some sob story. It doesn't explain why you're here, though."

"My thoughts exactly," Fury agreed.

"You were quite vague on this point earlier, brother," Thor added, looking expectantly at Loki.

"Wait," Tony spoke up before Loki could answer, brows furrowed. "The Chitauri—assuming that it actually _was _them and you're not a lying sack of shit...they managed to track you down in your bedroom on Asgard? From wherever the fuck they come from?"

Loki nodded, the beginnings of a smile tugging at his lips.

"So..." Suddenly, Tony's eyebrows shot up dramatically. "Oh, you fucking asshole. I know _exactly _why you're here."

Loki laughed. It was not a kind sound.

Natasha looked up at Fury, who was becoming steadily less impressed as the seconds ticked by. "Maybe you should, I don't know, _tell us_?" she suggested.

Tony started to pace. "They found him once, didn't they? So they're going to find him again. And he's going to be in my fucking house when they figure it out. He's going to draw the fucking Chitauri to my fucking house. Fuck! I don't want to have another battle! I don't want to rebuild this shit again!" He became steadily whinier and more vulgar throughout his rant, ending with a very adult stomp of the foot.

Loki was still chuckling, but he got enough of a handle on his mirth to say, "To be fair, depending on my location, I _might _draw the Chitauri to the headquarters of your SHIELD. Or to anywhere else, really."

Fury cleared his throat, getting everyone's attention. "I'm sorry, given that you're _leading them here_ on damn purpose, why the _hell _do you think we should protect you from them?"

Tapping his chin thoughtfully, Loki answered, "I suppose you don't _have_ to. But Chitauri on Earth? It seems rather dangerous to just let them wander about. I could evade them, of course. Lead them on a grand adventure...from sea to shining sea, perhaps. I have _so _wanted to visit California."

"Or," Tony suggested quickly, "You could just get off our planet."

Loki looked offended. "I think not. That would hardly be useful to anyone. Least of all me."

Tony, Fury, and Thor broke into a heated discussion.

Natasha was starting to get a pretty good idea what Loki's plan was. He knew the Chitauri were following him, and she figured that he wanted them—the Avengers—to get them off his tail. After all, they'd been pretty successful against them once. If they didn't do what Loki wanted, he was going to lead the Chitauri on a chase across the country, probably leaving death and destruction in their wake. She didn't know how long he could lead them on before they caught him, but she figured it would be long enough to do some serious damage. And she wouldn't put it past Loki to do exactly what he said he was going to, and to enjoy it, because even if he _did _die in the end, he'd get a hell of a lot of satisfaction out of making life hell for them in the interim.

So he'd do it, and that wasn't really a risk they could, in good conscience, take. Not if they could avoid it. She sighed and stated flatly, "We've gotta do it."

Everyone—even Loki—looked at her.

She explained, "Look. We take out the Chitauri, whatever's leading them, and it's over, right? Otherwise, he's just going to keep haunting us." And they needed to get this over with, needed to get Loki out of here—letting him linger, letting him make himself a problem (which he easily could, she had no doubt about that) wasn't going to be good. For any of them. But especially for _some _of them.

The others looked unimpressed to downright angry, but none of them disagreed.

In response to Natasha, Loki shrugged elegantly. "That's one way to look at it, yes. I have no intention of leaving until I feel it is safe for me to do so." The way he spoke made it clear that he knew that none of them could _make_ him do anything, not while he was at full power, not if he didn't agree to it. And Natasha knew it was true; trying to force him—to leave, to go into custody, to do _anything_—would be futile.

Still, she wanted to know, "Why can't you just get rid of them yourself? You're practically a god, aren't you?"

Loki scowled darkly before forcing his face into a bright smile. "Now, really. Where's the fun in that?"

In unison, everyone sighed. It was obvious that they weren't going to get anything else out of him. He was going to share exactly how much he needed to and nothing more.

Apparently realizing he'd won, and unable to refrain from rubbing it in, Loki smirked. "Although..."

"Although what?" Fury demanded, irritated by how handily Loki had gotten what he wanted.

"After being so soundly defeated, it is possible that the Chitauri would be reluctant to come to this realm at all. I _could _remain here indefinitely. Think of how much fun that could be."

The reaction was instantaneous. Tony clapped his hands together and exclaimed, "Okay, everyone. Operation 'Obliterate the Remaining Chitauri' begins now." He looked at Loki, then up at Fury. "Please? Can it start right now? Can it start yesterday?"

Natasha appreciated his enthusiasm, but really...she wished it could wait until after a nap.

* * *

**Thanks for reading. And doing all that other stuff. Like, following. And favoriting.**

**I'm finally getting an idea how long this is going to be, and it's intimidating. In a 'wtf am I thinking' kind of way. **

**Wtf am I thinking?**

**Anyway, please review. It makes me feel like I have a purpose in the universe.**


	7. Smarmy, Sarcastic, Aggravating

**Warnings: mention of drug use, Loki.**

**My beta, irite, is the best. I need to look into new ways of saying that.**

**I do not own The Avengers.**

* * *

Clint wasn't sure if coffee could go bad, but he was willing to bet that it was possible.

At least based on how this sludge tasted.

But it was all he had in the cupboard, and he _really_ wasn't in the mood to head down to the nearest convenience store, so he brewed a pot of it and then, with grim determination, set to drinking it. He'd had worse, but nothing he'd ever brewed himself had tasted _this_ bad.

He offered Bruce a cup, of course, but the physicist didn't really do caffeine (and honestly, even if he did, he probably wasn't interested in expired coffee anyway) and since he didn't have any decaf or non-caffeinated tea, the only other thing Clint had to offer was tap water.

Which Bruce accepted gracefully.

Now they were sitting at the small table in the kitchenette, in more or less enduring silence. Occasionally, one or the other would speak, but for the most part they were quiet, taking sips of their drinks and staring at opposite walls, thinking.

For about twenty minutes, at the beginning, Bruce had talked. He explained to Clint how Loki had told Thor that he was looking for protection from the Chitauri who'd apparently showed up on Asgard in search of him.

To which Clint had (rather more rationally than he'd thought himself capable of) responded, "Yeah, I talked to Thor for a few minutes...a couple of days ago, I guess. He was worried Loki might be in trouble. So that fits. But I want to know, why the _fuck_ does Loki think we'd protect him?"

Bruce didn't have an answer for that, and neither did Clint, and even after ten minutes of brainstorming they couldn't come up with anything better than 'Thor will do just about anything for Loki—even though he's an untrustworthy little shit.'

Which made something like molten rock ooze in Clint's stomach, but it wasn't really something anyone could deny—even after everything Loki had done, Thor still believed his brother could be redeemed. That family could persevere. In almost any other situation, such faith would be admirable.

Here, it was just infuriating.

After their brainstorming session, Bruce and Clint had lapsed into silence. Clint had gotten the information he was looking for, and really, what else was there to talk about?

'Cause neither one of them was going to bring up _why_ they were here.

Clint sure as hell wasn't going to—he didn't want to talk about that shit. About Loki. About what that bastard showing up had almost driven him to do. About what could have happened, what it could have meant.

About what might, if Clint was honest with himself, still happen.

Relapse.

No, he didn't want to talk about it, especially since he was so busy brooding over it. Unproductive, yes. Quite possibly counterproductive. But he'd been doing so well for so long, and then fucking Loki had shown up out of nowhere, at the end of an already-shitty week. Fury had pretty much benched him (saying Clint couldn't handle working on his own—the fact the director was right didn't make that sting any less), and his shrink had gone missing, and on top of all that, someone had lifted his psych records off of him (before he even got a chance to look at them, too, didn't _that_ fucking figure?).

But Loki had been the icing on the cake, as it were. The straw that broke the camel's back. And maybe it wasn't so much Loki's appearance (although that sucked), but rather the seemingly casual way his appearance had been accepted by the other Avengers.

That had driven Clint straight out of the Tower, straight back to his old 'home.'

Luckily (or not, depending on how you looked at it, and Clint honestly couldn't decide), Bruce had tagged along with him, hadn't left Clint to his own devices when he'd had the chance.

And now that he'd managed to infiltrate Clint's apartment, he didn't seem particularly inclined to leave.

Or speak, but Clint didn't blame him. He knew he could be...volatile. It had gotten better since he'd gotten through withdrawal, but his temper was still, at times, unpredictable. Probably related to his anxiety; when he wasn't panicking, he tended to express his nerves through lashing out. So really, Bruce's silence was probably good for the both of them—after all, Bruce wasn't really someone you wanted to lash out at.

So they sat. For...hours. In silence. While Clint slowly decimated a pot of stale coffee.

Around 6:00, Bruce's phone rang. He took it out of his pocket and looked at the display. He started to answer, then seemed to think better of that idea and asked, "It's Natasha. Do you want to talk to her?"

At that moment, Clint realized that he didn't have his own phone on him—on account of having left the Tower in his pajamas. He also realized that he'd driven across New York in his pajamas.

That was embarrassing. The thing about his phone, though...that was unfortunate. Because that meant he was going to have to go back. And sooner, rather than later because—

_Because you need to call Fury, dumbass. You need to tell him what Stark and Banner found_.

Of course he'd forgotten all about that.

Before...all of this shit (and had it only been three hours since he'd left the Tower? Six since he'd gone to bed?) the two scientists had been working on tracking Clint's psych records for him. They'd finally managed to get a location on his shrink's laptop—the logic being that whoever had kidnapped her and stolen her computer was probably the same person or persons who'd lifted his records—and Clint hadn't shared that info with Fury yet. He'd meant to do it early this morning, during an hour when the director would be in the office.

But then all the shit with Loki had happened (and God only knows what the others were telling SHIELD about that, if they were telling them _anything_), and he'd forgotten. And now that he'd remembered...he needed his phone. Fury's direct line could only be reached by certain authorized numbers...and by Tony, who had a knack for bypassing security protocols.

Realizing that he still hadn't answered Bruce's question, Clint shook his head. Which was just as well—the phone had stopped ringing, the call gone to voicemail. Clint gave an apologetic shrug.

Bruce chuckled. "Do you mind if I send her a text message, tell her we're all right?"

"No, that's fine. You'd better, actually, before she gets worried." At least, any more worried that she already undoubtedly was. Natasha had been more or less assigned as his babysitter months ago, but she'd taken to the role with an amazing amount of patience. And with far more dedication than Clint figured Fury had intended when he'd assigned her to 'asset retention.' Someday, he was going to make it up to her, somehow, if he even could. The number of times she'd saved his ass, how hard she'd worked to keep him on track...Clint didn't know if that kind of debt _could_ be repaid.

He owed her. Oh, God, did he owe her. And he owed her more than this, what he'd been doing since Loki showed up. For that reason, if for none other, he needed to do better, needed to get his shit together. Needed to stop with the brooding, the angst. He had a job to do. More than one, actually (because there was no way he was sitting out on the Loki situation, no matter what Fury wanted), so he needed to focus. Think. Do what he'd been trained to do, work through this like he'd learned how. Even if it was one of the hardest things he'd ever had to do in his life.

As Bruce sent his text message, Clint stood and walked to the sink, rinsing his coffee cup under the faucet. Then he turned to Bruce. "I need to go back." He looked down at his pajamas. "But I need to put on real pants first."

Looking somewhat surprised, Bruce nodded. "Sure."

When Clint slipped back into the kitchen (showered and changed), Bruce was standing by the door, examining the floor between his feet, hands shoved awkwardly in his pockets. He looked up at Clint, then back at his feet, then back at Clint. "Hey."

Clint got the distinct impression that Bruce wanted to say something more substantial than 'hey.' Still, he returned the greeting. "Hey. What's up?"

Bruce cocked his head slightly to one side, then said in a rush, "You shouldn't come back here."

"What?" Partly, Clint hadn't understood his rushed words. And what he _thought_ he'd heard hadn't made much sense.

Bruce repeated, "You shouldn't come back here." Then, seeing Clint's imminent interjection, he went on, "At least alone. But preferably not at all. This isn't a good place for you, and, uh, it'd be better to make a clean break from it. From, um, your past. 'Cause that's all in the past," he waved a vague hand, "And it should stay there."

Clint had actually had a similar revelation while he'd been in the shower. This place...wasn't home. Not anymore. He had something better, now, and even if he _was_ pissed off at the rest of the team...he could see the knee-jerk reaction for what it was. Having this as an option wasn't going to help him. He _needed_ the support of the others, had grown to depend on it, had learned that it was _okay_ that he depended on it. So he nodded. "You're right. If you hadn't come in..." he trailed off, shaking his head. Thinking about it, dwelling on it wasn't going to help. Instead, he grinned. "Anyway, Tony would flip if he knew how bad this place sucked, right?"

Bruce smiled. "He'd probably buy the building and have it razed." He raised an eyebrow. "You ready to go home?"

"Damn straight I am." He opened the door and gestured Bruce through, following close behind, before shutting it tightly behind him and locking it. Then, he turned to Bruce, tugging the apartment key off the keyring in his hand. "Here. Don't care what you do with it. There's not a lot here worth keeping that Nat hasn't already scavenged."

Bruce looked surprised. "You sure? I mean, don't you want your coffee? It's practically an antique."

Clint smirked. "Not really. Although...maybe give the key to Nat, she can do one more sweep through here, pick up the coffee. I think there might be some old cheese in the fridge she can get, too."

Bruce nodded and, with a small smile, pocketed the key.

In the parking lot, Bruce gave him the car keys (that Clint had thrown at him earlier—and now he was regretting that move a little), and Clint slid into the driver's seat. When Bruce was in, he took off, heading back to the Tower.

As he drove, he could feel he was getting more apprehensive—something that was probably not helped by the massive amount of caffeine he'd consumed so far this morning—and he forced himself to calm down, focusing on the definite steps that he needed to take.

The first was obviously to talk to Nat. Then he needed to talk to Fury about the lead on his shrink. Then he needed to...

_Not have a fucking meltdown and deal with Loki_.

Pretty much.

The drive back to the Tower was about as quiet as the drive out had been, but much less tense. Clint didn't blare pop music like he'd done on the way there, and Bruce seemed to appreciate that.

And Clint got an immediate opportunity to get the first item on his 'to do' list out of the way.

He and Bruce were riding the elevator up when it stopped and the doors opened on the floor that housed Tony's lab. Natasha got on.

She looked surprised to see them, but recovered quickly. To Bruce, she said, "Good, you're back. Tony's in his lab with Thor and his brother, he could use a hand with...whatever."

Bruce took the hint and exited the elevator.

As soon as the doors shut behind him and the elevator started moving again, Natasha slumped against the back wall with an exhausted sigh. But then she straightened and glared at Clint. "What the fuck is your problem?"

He sighed; he knew he deserved this. "Look—"

She cut him off with a gesture. "Not here. I need coffee."

Really, she looked like she needed about eighteen hours of uninterrupted sleep, but with all the shit going down, it didn't seem likely that she was going to get that. So Clint snapped his mouth shut. He'd learned the hard way that poking at a sleep-deprived Natasha would end in painful retaliation once she was firing on all cylinders again.

They got off on their floor and Natasha made a beeline for the kitchen. Clint followed her more slowly. When he made it to the kitchen, she was already drinking from her freshly-filled cup.

When she came up for air, she gestured to the table—the one Loki had been sitting at earlier—and said tersely, "Sit."

Clint was not stupid enough to argue with that tone. He settled into the chair in the corner and looked up at Natasha. He tried to apologize. "I'm sorry—"

"What? You're sorry that I had to come home from the other side of the world and find Loki sitting in my kitchen and you just fucking _gone_?"

That was a pretty good assessment of the situation; Clint nodded slowly.

Natasha crossed the room in two steps and slammed her cup on the table. She threw herself into the chair across from him. "Yeah. Sure. Okay. " She rubbed the bridge of her nose and let out a long sigh. "This shit—" she cut herself off, then tried again, "You can't—I know this _sucks_—

By now, Clint had a pretty good idea what she was trying to say, and figured he could help her out. "I, uh. This thing with Loki...it threw me." Understatement of the year. "But I think I can do this—"

"Where were you?" she interrupted, terse.

Okay, so maybe there was no escaping this. Clint grimaced. "I, um. I went back to my place." He tried to gauge Natasha's reaction, but she looked too tired, too worn out, for him to get much more from her than that.

After a tense moment, Natasha prompted him, "And?"

"And..." he looked down at the table. "It wasn't...as bad as it could have been."

"I cleared out your stash," Natasha stated flatly.

"I noticed," Clint answered, equally flat.

"If I hadn't?"

Well, might as well go with honest. She'd probably see through a lie anyway. "Then it probably would have been as bad as it could have been."

She nodded. "But it wasn't."

"No. It wasn't."

Natasha gave him a long look. "You're okay?"

"I...no. But I think I can do this, Nat. I was just...surprised. And then everyone seemed _okay_ with that bastard being here, and I freaked. But I can do better, I just—"

Natasha was actually smiling.

"_What?_" Clint demanded.

"You thought they were _okay_ with Loki being here? Clint, everyone's pissed off about it. You have no idea. And once you hear his grand plan..."

Interest piqued (and thrilled to have the focus shift from him), Clint asked, "He has a plan? What's his play?"

Natasha's raised eyebrow clearly said 'I know what you're doing' but she humored him anyway. "He's being hounded by whatever's left of the Chitauri. He wants us to get them off his ass. Isn't going to get off our planet 'til we do."

Clint scowled. "Asshole. What's he gonna do if we don't play along?"

With a shrug, Natasha said, "Oh, you know. Make a nuisance of himself. Drag the Chitauri on a death-and-destruction tour across the whole damn country."

And that sounded exactly like something Loki would do.

Natasha rubbed the bridge of her nose again and yawned into her coffee cup. "Anyway, we're trying to work out a plan to get this all cleared up, but honestly we don't have a lot to work with and Loki's not being much of a help, I mean, of course not, why would he? Fury's looking into some leads, and Stark's working on _something_ but he's so sleep deprived and caffeinated that he's not making any sense—"

"Or maybe you're just too sleep deprived and caffeinated to understand him," Clint countered. "Have you gotten any sleep since you left here?" From the looks of things, they were having a bit of a lull. Maybe Nat could catch a break after all.

"Some," Natasha admitted. "Not much. Not enough. But I can't—"

"You need to rest," Clint insisted. He was struck suddenly with the role reversal that had just happened, and it made him all the more insistent. "Look, you're not going to do any good like this. Fury's working on it. I think you can take a few hours to get enough sleep to be _human_ again."

Natasha narrowed her eyes at him. "Is this what I've sounded like to you for the last few months?"

"More or less? Look, just get some sleep."

"Indeed, Romanoff, you _do _look quite tired," came Loki's voice from the doorway, smarmy and dripping faux concern.

Clint whipped his head up. Loki was standing framed in the doorway. Thor was behind him, one hand clamped tightly around Loki's upper arm; it looked like he was holding him tightly enough to bruise. In fact, it looked like Thor was trying very hard to physically drag Loki down the hall. But Loki had planted his feet and refused to be moved, despite Thor's superior strength.

Loki, though he had addressed Natasha, was not looking at her. His attention was focused entirely on Clint. There was a small smile playing around his lips, and the look in his eyes was not kind.

In fact, it was...predatory.

Clint took a deep breath, clamping down on the emotions that were threatening to rise up, but before he could say anything (or address the _creepy _way Loki was looking at him—what the _fuck?_), Thor gave Loki's arm a particularly vicious yank and pulled him away from the door. "I am taking my brother to rest. He will be of no further trouble for some time." A not-so-vague threat towards Loki was evident in Thor's tone.

It, of course, had no effect on Loki. Outright grinning, Loki let himself be manhandled down the hall, but not before he gave a small, cheery wave that Clint had no doubts was meant entirely for him.

In the demigods' wake, there was several seconds of silence before Natasha prodded, "Clint?"

"I'm fine," he assured her, wincing at how tense he sounded. He tried to relax, willing the tension out of his shoulders. "You really should get some sleep." God only knew when they'd get this opportunity again.

Natasha nodded slowly. "Yeah. You're right. But what are you going to do in the meantime?"

"Me? I need to give Fury a call." Clint chose not to comment on the fact that she apparently didn't want to leave him alone and unoccupied. There might have been a momentary reversal of roles a few moments ago, but she wasn't done taking care of him yet.

"Yeah? About what? Do you have a lead on Paquette?"

"Something like that," he muttered. There was so much he hadn't told her yet. But it could wait. She needed to rest, and he had work to do.

"Good. That's good." Natasha yawned, suddenly drooping. "Wake me up if anything happens, hey? And you get some rest, too."

He nodded his agreement, and Natasha stood and slipped out of the kitchen, leaving her empty coffee cup on the table behind her.

Clint sighed before standing up as well. He had to make a phone call.

* * *

When Natasha woke up, she was confused. Because the clock said it was 6:30. At night. And that was a really, _really_ weird time to wake up.

Also, it meant she'd been sleeping for almost twelve hours.

In the middle of a crisis.

She sat up quickly and practically leaped out of bed, lunging for where she'd left her phone on the dresser across the room. Picking it up, though, she saw that she actually had no missed calls and no text messages.

There were no alarms going off or anything, and no one had come to wake her up...

Maybe...nothing had happened while she was out?

The idea that the other residents of the Tower could handle Loki for twelve hours without her was...foreign, and she was still inclined to believe that some catastrophe had befallen them that had prevented them from contacting her, but she thought that was unlikely enough that she took the time to shower and change before slipping out of her room.

After all, Loki wanted their help. He _probably _wasn't going to attack them. Right?

As she was heading down the hall, her phone buzzed in her pocket. It was a text message from Fury. All it said was, 'Rogers is back. Explained everything. He's on his way with more info.'

Natasha had never been so thankful for the supersoldier in her life. Finally, someone was definitively in charge. And it wasn't her. Leadership really wasn't her thing. Covert ops, yes. Giving orders? Not so much.

She said aloud, "JARVIS, could you please let me know when Rogers gets back?"

"Certainly, Agent Romanoff."

That done, she went for more coffee.

The kitchen was, unusually, empty when she got there, so after she'd gotten her coffee she made her way to the living room.

Tony was sprawled out on one couch, mouth hanging open, fast asleep, snoring slightly. Bruce was sitting in an armchair, tapping away at the laptop perched on the arm of the chair. Loki was in the chair next to him, disinterestedly watching some cooking show on the Food Network. When she came in the room, both Bruce and Loki looked up.

"Hey," Bruce greeted her.

She nodded, trying to decide which pressing question she needed to ask first. She settled on, "Where's Clint?"

"Sleeping," Bruce answered. He nodded towards Tony, who was, she could see, drooling. "It's kind of group nap time."

"Thor?" Natasha inquired.

"Same," Bruce said. "We figured I'd be enough of a deterrent against Loki trying anything. Given how things, uh, went down last time we met."

"I can hear you, you know," Loki remarked casually, changing the channel to HGTV. "And as I have said no fewer than sixteen times since my arrival, such dedicated observation is not necessary. I require your aid, I am not going to—"

Natasha interrupted him. "Yeah, sorry, I don't buy that." Even if she'd had the same thought not five minutes ago, the simple fact remained that he _had_ threatened their whole planet if they didn't do what he wanted. Clearly he had no qualms about potential violence. "We're not going to risk it. How stupid do you think we are?"

Loki gave a sly smile. "Do you truly wish me to answer that?" Not waiting for her answer, he turned back to his program.

Natasha resisted a very mature urge to throw a lamp at the back of his head.

Bruce, probably sensing that, stood and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a key. "Here. Clint wanted me to give this to you. It's the key to his old place." He didn't say anything more—wouldn't, not in front of Loki—but Natasha understood. Clint wanted her to know that he was never going back there again, that he was surrendering one of the last pieces of his must-do-this-alone mentality.

So with a small smile and nod, she took the key, slipping it into her pants pocket. Then, she said to Bruce, "Fury sent me a message. Said Steve's on his way here with some info for us."

"Yeah?" came Clint's still-sleepy voice from the hall behind her. "Did he say anything else? 'Cause he said he might have something on Sam—" he cut himself off abruptly, eyes focusing on Loki. "Oh."

Loki turned back around to face them. "Good morning, Barton. How nice of you to join us. I was wondering if you would. I was starting to think you're...avoiding me."

He _sounded _friendly enough, but Natasha didn't like the look on his face one bit (he looked smug, and just a little bit...angry), and she _really _didn't even want Loki talking to Clint, not ever, and especially not after what had already happened. So she quickly intervened, shooting a hard glare at Loki (who gave her his best 'innocent' look in response—like that was fooling anybody) before tugging Clint out of the vicinity.

She steadfastly ignored the dark chuckle that followed them out of the room.

Clint went along easily, pliant, and she deposited him at the counter in the still-empty kitchen. Natasha set her coffee down on the counter and went to grab him a cup, but he grabbed hers and took a drink.

"That was mine," she pointed out.

Clint shrugged, one corner of his mouth turned up. "I know." He offered it back.

With an annoyed huff (although she wasn't really annoyed; this was the kind of playfulness they'd had 'before,' and if Clint was making an effort to get back to that, then she was going to let him. Especially if it was helping him deal with Loki) Natasha turned to the coffee machine for a fresh cup.

When she was done, she settled down next to him. "You talked to Fury today?"

Clint nodded. "Yeah, pre-nap. He said he was going to look into the location I sent him—well, have someone look into it, anyway—and that he'd get back to me when he had something definitive. Guess he doesn't yet."

"He didn't mention it," Natasha agreed. "Or he forgot, I mean, he does kinda have his hands full."

Clint snorted. "Yeah." Then he added, "But Fury? Forget something?"

Natasha conceded the point. "Probably still waiting on his team."

They sat together in comfortable silence for several minutes, just sipping their coffee, until Clint said (quiet, hesitant, as if he had not meant to speak at all), "Every time I see him...Loki...I just...it's like I can't decide if I want to attack him or run. Tried both already, didn't do shit, so I need a new plan." He looked up from his coffee. "My plans always suck, Nat."

She was inclined to agree with him, but wasn't going to say so at the moment. She'd decided earlier, when they'd first talked, that the you-need-to-get-your-shit-together lecture wasn't going to do any good until he was more stable. Instead, she suggested, "I think the best you can do is just avoid him, for now. Well," she amended quickly, "Within reason, anyway." Clint's last attempt to avoid Loki had been a little too extreme, and that wasn't going to work. He needed to stay where he had support. Which he seemed to get, to some extent at least.

It just sucked that his support team was also the world's crisis intervention team. And that the world was having a crisis.

Clint just nodded once, terse, his shoulders tense.

"Anyway," Natasha said after a moment, "Once Steve gets here, we'll find out what Fury's got for us in terms of intel so far, see if he's got any plans. And then we'll start to deal with this." She wasn't going to promise him that it was going to be easy, that it would be quick and painless. It probably wasn't going to be. It was probably going to be God-awful, because whenever Loki was involved, that's just how things _went_.

But they'd deal with that. She could promise that, at least.

Just as Natasha was standing up to start looking for some dinner (lunch? breakfast?), JARVIS announced, "Captain Rogers is ascending to your floor, Agent Romanoff."

Typical.

She cast a look at Clint, but all he did was give her that half-shrug that could mean about a thousand different things, so she was more explicit. "Fury doesn't want you in on the Loki thing."

"Fury can fuck himself."

Fair enough. And in that case... "You hungry?"

"Starving."

Natasha nodded, pulling out her phone. She thought for a minute, then dialed a familiar number.

She'd just hung up when Steve popped his head into the kitchen. "Hey, I need to talk to everyone, I was—"

"I ordered pizza," Natasha interrupted him. "It'll be here in half an hour. If we're going to have a huge, dramatic group meeting, we're doing it with food."

"And I'm going to shower," Clint added, pushing past Steve.

The supersoldier looked momentarily thrown, but he recovered quickly. "Uh, sure. Pizza's good. And I wouldn't mind a shower, either..." To Clint's retreating back, he called, "But Clint, Fury said you're not—"

Natasha interrupted him with a hand on his shoulder. "He's not very interested in what Fury said."

Steve looked down at her. Quietly, he asked, "Do you think it's a good idea to let him in on this?"

It was an honest question, and it was testament to Steve's faith in Clint that he was more than willing to disregard Fury's instructions regarding him so easily.

Natasha shrugged. "It's a worse idea to leave him out. Because he _will_ get involved, one way or another."

Steve seemed to accept that. "Okay. I'm going to get cleaned up. Let the others know what's going on. And Natasha?"

"Hmm?"

"Loki...how's he seem?"

"Smarmy. Sarcastic. Aggravating. Clint's already tried to kill him."

Steve clenched his jaw. "Okay." Then he sighed. "Just wanted to know what we were dealing with. Trying to be ready. You know?"

There was a distinct slump to his shoulders as he walked away.

Yeah, this wasn't going to be easy on any of them.

* * *

**Thanks for reading.**


	8. Camp Avengers

**Warnings: language, Loki being an asshole. The usual.**

**Thanks to my beta, irite, for pointing out when Loki isn't nearly enough of a douchebag.**

**I do not own The Avengers.**

* * *

Freshly showered, Clint felt somewhat more human than he had earlier, and eating pizza didn't hurt, either.

Still, he was tense. And consequently, not _really_ eating the pizza. Mostly, he held it loosely in one hand and nibbled at it when he could feel Natasha glaring at him, doing his best to pretend like it didn't taste like cardboard. For how hungry he'd been only a half hour before, now he felt like his stomach was filled with lead.

The group had, once they'd all been awakened and alerted, assembled to discuss their current situation, which meant that all of them—including Loki—were now in the same room.

Hence Clint's current tense state.

They'd opted to use Tony's workshop for the meeting, much to the billionaire's displeasure. He didn't want Loki near his stuff, a sentiment that Clint could wholeheartedly endorse. But the fact remained that the workshop was more or less a concrete bunker, with shatter-proof glass in all the windows, so if something was going to go horribly, horribly awry, this was the place for it to happen.

So they pulled together some chairs and cleared a table, throwing the pizzas on it along with some cans of soda and bottles of water, and everyone grabbed some food before settling down.

Even Loki, though he looked at the pizza with an expression somewhere between puzzlement and disgust before deigning to take a small bite.

Clint did his best to ignore Thor's brother, but this was not made easy by the fact that the meeting was about him. Equally unhelpful was Clint's paranoia. He felt like Loki was staring at him, but every time he looked up, the demigod was looking quietly into his lap or chewing on his pizza with a disgusted look on his face.

Still, the feeling of being watched lingered.

Once he'd scarfed down a slice of pizza and started on a second, Steve opened the meeting with, "I talked to Fury, and he told me what you guys talked about earlier. Loki's looking for our protection, and he's not going anywhere until he's sure he's safe." He cast a look at Loki, who just shrugged innocently, like he _wasn't _threatening all seven billion people on the planet. Simultaneously. That had to be some sort of record or something. "The Chitauri are going to follow him here. We know that. So we need a plan to take them down again."

"Yup, that about sums it up," Tony supplied, in a distinctly no-shit-Sherlock tone. "Glad to have that concise summary."

Clint raised an eyebrow at the snark. But then, Tony's nap had been interrupted, and given how his sleep schedule generally worked, he probably hadn't gotten much rest in days. Maybe the bitchiness was understandable. Besides, Clint knew that he'd been a bitch on more than one occasion recently, so the least he could do was forgive someone else.

Steve was forgiving of Tony's attitude as well. At least, he ignored it and continued, "We don't know how long it's going to take them to figure out where Loki is, so we think we should move fast. Fury and I agree that having another battle in Manhattan shouldn't happen, if we can avoid it, so we're going to move out of the area. Fury's going to stay in the city, working with some other countries to get ready, so he's sending Hill with us tomorrow."

Hmm. That could be an issue. Clint didn't know how much about his situation Fury had shared with anyone else in the organization. From what he'd understood, it was going to be kept between the two (well, three, counting Nat) of them, but it's entirely possible Hill knew about it. Which meant she'd know if he wasn't supposed to be there.

Oh well, he'd have to risk it. No way was he letting Loki get away from him this time. He asked, "When do we leave?"

Louder, though, Tony objected, "Um, hell no. I'm not going to Camp Avengers or something. I had my share of living rough. You know. The whole cave thing. 'Bout did it for me."

Reasonably, Steve said, "Look, I know it's not...ideal, but it's the only way to keep civilian casualties low. Besides, Fury says that SHIELD has a base out in the country. It's not like we're going to be living in tents." Steve offered this in a conciliatory tone, but personally did not seem like the possibility of living in tents fazed him.

Tony looked to Bruce for support, but Bruce just shrugged. "I mean, if we have to go, we have to go. It's probably the best solution."

Steve nodded, and when it became clear that Tony wasn't going to object any more, he went on, "The only real problem is transport. The facility is a couple of hours' drive from the city, or a shorter helicopter ride." He looked at Thor. "We'd need you to keep Loki under control—"

"I _can _hear you," Loki pointed out exasperated, repeating something that was becoming one of his more common phrases. "I do not need to be kept 'under control.' I seek your _help_, I am not going to—"

"It will not be a problem," Thor stated, cutting Loki off. Clint was grateful. Something about Loki's voice made his hand twitch towards his gun. At least, where his gun would be if he was carrying one. Which, at the moment, he _certainly wasn't_. Nope. Why would he be, for a nice, friendly meeting like this?

The gun holstered at his back was completely irrelevant.

Thor continued, voice dark, "My brother will be cooperative, I am certain."

Loki rolled his eyes at Thor's attempt to sound threatening, but didn't comment, so Clint repeated his question. "When do we leave?"

Steve shot him an uneasy look, but answered, "Tomorrow morning; there's a helicopter leaving from SHIELD for anyone who wants to go that way. We can head out later if we drive." Then, frankly, he said, "But Clint, Fury said you're not on this detail."

This time, Clint knew he wasn't imagining that all the eyes in the room were on him. "I know. I don't care." He glared at Loki, forcing himself to meet the demigod's eyes before turning back to Steve. "This is something I need to take care of."

Steve nodded. "I get that. And I think you should do what you need to do. If it's that important to you."

"But don't you have another assignment?" Natasha pointed out pragmatically from where she was sitting next to Clint. "For that matter, so do I."

The two of them had been assigned to work on his shrink's disappearance, but it looked like Natasha was getting pulled into this Avengers thing instead. And without her, Clint _couldn't_ work on the other assignment. He was still on probation, having thoroughly proved that he was not capable of working on his own just yet, and so all of his 'work' had to be supervised by another agent. Natasha was the obvious choice, since she knew all about his 'situation' _and _was already briefed on the Paquette case.

"Fury didn't mention another case..." Steve trailed off. "But then, if that's straight SHIELD stuff, he probably wouldn't. I mean, I'm not really part of all that 'secret agent' stuff."

Tony chuckled at the obvious quotes around 'secret agent,' and Bruce spoke up, "Well, Fury has a lot going on right now, so..."

That's pretty much what Clint had been thinking. Clint had given Fury a lead on the case hours ago, and the director had said he'd call Clint when he had something for him to work with. The delay either meant there was no information coming in or that Fury had just forgotten. The fact that he hadn't thought to mention Natasha's prior commitment to Steve made Clint lean towards 'he forgot.'

That was almost...convenient.

"I'll call him and confirm," Clint offered quickly, looking at Natasha. "Get this straightened out."

She narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously but nodded. Apparently satisfied that Clint was going to get Fury's official 'ok' before proceeding with either mission, Steve continued the meeting.

Clint, of course, had no intention of calling Fury to get this straightened out, or of getting his permission to work on the Loki thing. If the other case had slipped his mind, then Clint wasn't going to remind him about it. And he sure was hell wasn't going to give the director the chance to stop him from tagging along with the other Avengers. When he got to the field base, he'd work any problems out then if he had to. But he couldn't just let them go without him. Not when _this _had to be taken care of. Not when he had Loki on his plate. Taunting him. Smirking at him.

He was, too, the smug bastard. Right now.

"What?" Clint demanded harshly, focused on Loki, and interrupting something Steve had been saying.

Loki looked as startled by his outburst as everyone else, and Clint had never in his life wanted to shoot someone so badly as he did in that moment. Well. At least, never in the last twelve hours. Into the resultant silence, Loki shrugged and spoke, "I am not certain what you are accusing me of." One corner of his mouth curled up, insolent. "But at least you're accusing me and not firing a gun at me, yes?"

Clint knew Loki was full of shit. Knew Loki was trying to get a reaction out of him. But the others—all of them, even Nat—were looking at him with that _look_, the one that said 'we need to tread carefully here' and Clint knew he had to get himself under control quickly lest they start to agree with Fury's assessment that he no business on this op. He apologized, a muttered, "Sorry," and folded his hands in his lap, clenching them together so hard that his knuckles went white.

A moment later, Steve picked up where he'd left off. "Fury's still looking into possibilities to take the Chitauri down. Does anyone have any ideas?"

He looked at Loki.

Doing his best 'who, me?' impression, Loki asked, "Why would you believe I know anything about how to best contain their forces?"

"Oh, I don't know," Tony mused. "Maybe because you commanded them?"

"Hardly," Loki dismissed him, looking disdainful. "I did as I was told, and they did as they were told. There was very little interaction between us. I fear I shall be next to useless in any attempt to stop them." He did not seem at all distraught about this. In fact, he seemed quite pleased with himself.

_And he wouldn't tell us if he knew anything, anyway_, Clint thought. _Asshole._ He wondered, briefly, if the whole mind-rape thing had fallen under Loki's umbrella of 'doing what he was told.'

Then he dismissed that thought abruptly because, yeah, not going there. That was a road that _needed _to be traveled, but not right now. Priorities and all that jazz.

Tony looked towards Clint and Natasha. "Last time they invaded...don't suppose SHIELD has, I don't know, a couple of, uh, bodies laying around?"

Natasha tilted her head to one side. "You mean Chitauri bodies? We...might. Not our division, though, you'd want to talk to the labs."

Bruce chuckled uncomfortably. "Maybe someone else can do that? 'Cause, uh, last time I worked with them, I got kidnapped."

"To be fair," Tony pointed out, "It took you a really long time to notice you _had_ been kidnapped."

From the annoyed look Bruce was shooting Tony, Clint gathered that had not been a helpful comment at all.

"The odds of that happening again are minimal," Natasha stated, completely serious. "But I can work with them."

Tony stood up and grabbed more pizza. "Just thought taking a little look might be helpful. I mean, I'm sure your biologists did autopsies, so those reports would be good, and then maybe me and Brucie here could go take a quick peek before we head out. Just so we, you know, actually know what we're up against this time. Might help us come up with some ideas."

This, Clint thought, was why it was good to keep a couple of brainiacs around. Always good for coming up with ideas. And if anyone could help them get out of this mess, it was these two.

Natasha nodded, saying, "Sure. I'll see what we can get you."

"You're a peach," Tony gushed. Bruce rolled his eyes.

"If," Loki began, "We are through, or at the very least, if you have no further need of me, I would like to get some rest. If I am to be traveling tomorrow, I wish to be prepared. How shall I be transported? In a cage, perhaps? Because that was so pleasant the last time we tried it." He looked to Bruce. "Or perhaps that is how they intend to transport _you_?"

Bruce didn't dignify that with an answer. Tersely, Steve said, "You'll be going by helicopter." He looked at Thor. "If that's all right with you?"

"It is of no matter to—" Loki said petulantly, but was interrupted by Thor.

"That will be fine. I understand that we will be leaving fairly early in that case?"

"Yeah," Steve affirmed. "The helicopter's leaving SHIELD at 7:00."

Ah. That meant Loki would only be in the tower another twelve hours or so. Probably smart, getting him out of here ASAP. If only because it'd give him less time to antagonize everyone.

_Especially me_, Clint thought, aiming a subtle glance at Loki.

This time, he caught Loki staring at him.

The demigod looked away quickly, but Clint _knew_. He hadn't been imagining it. That asshole really _was _being creepy. Trying to get under Clint's skin, and damn it, it was working.

Thor stood, and Loki followed, even before Thor could reach out and pull him up. "In that case, we shall retire for the evening." Then, Thor asked, a bit awkwardly, "How will we get to SHIELD in the morning?"

Natasha volunteered, "I can take you in. I can get what Stark and Banner need at the same time." She looked at Clint. "You want to come? You can talk to Fury about that other case."

Yeah, that wasn't going to work out for him, not with what he was planning. "Uh, no. I'll call Fury." He shrugged at her. "Hey, I'm on probation. Think I'm going to try and stay off the premises for a while, you know? And, uh," he glanced at Loki then met Natasha's eyes. "Might be better to uh, you know..."

"Not take a car ride with someone he tried to murder," Tony supplied helpfully, standing up and going in for the last of the pizza. He cursorily offered it to Bruce, who shook his head slightly, before starting in on it.

"Yeah, that," Clint deadpanned. "Thanks, Stark."

"No problem."

Natasha narrowed her eyes at him, giving him that 'I think you're up to something' look, but she relented. "Fine. I'll drop them off, then come back here. We're leaving at 6:00," she told Thor.

Thor nodded his acquiescence to the plan and led Loki (not dragging him, this time) out of the room.

The others watched them leave, then Natasha turned to Clint. "Want to head back upstairs?"

"Sure," he answered easily. "We can leave the science geeks to whatever it is they do."

"What they 'do,'" Bruce said, "Is go to bed like everyone else. At least this one does." He glanced at Tony. "You?"

Tony cast a longing look towards his workstation, then shook his head. "Yeah, bed sounds good. I guess. It's early, but whatever. Work will wait. Someone going to watch Loki?"

"I think Thor's got it under control," Bruce observed.

Clint had his doubts, but for the moment, he could let those slide.

Loki would be out of his hair soon enough.

* * *

Natasha had never really known regular sleep patterns, but in the time since she'd joined up with the Avengers, things had actually normaled out some. At least, until the whole thing with Clint had started. That had screwed with things pretty badly, for all involved parties.

Still, not having a normal circadian rhythm didn't throw her off like it did some people. So waking up at 5:15 to get Thor and his stupid brother out the door by 6:00 wasn't too offensive.

She took a quick shower and threw together a bag of clothes and other necessities for their little trip out of town. Then, deciding that she could come back and get her gear _after _dropping those two off, she put the bag by the door of her room, armed herself minimally, and headed towards the kitchen for coffee.

It wasn't very surprising, when she got there, that Clint was sitting at the table, still in his ratty t-shirt and pajama pants, two cups of coffee in front of him. With toast. And yogurt.

He gestured to the other cup of coffee and the food. "I made you breakfast."

Natasha pulled out a chair and sat, pulling the coffee and the yogurt in towards her. "Did you sleep?"

"No."

Well, that was expected. She tried instead, "Did you eat?"

"No."

"You're going to, though?"

"Yes, mom. Just when it's not...pre-dawn."

Fair enough, she supposed. And he sounded so tired that she let the 'mom' gibe slide, where she might have reached over and smacked him under normal circumstances. He looked like hell this morning, with the dark circles and worry-lines that had become all too familiar during the last several months.

That he hadn't slept wasn't unusual, especially given the circumstances. Still, she wasn't too fond of the idea of leaving him alone, so she asked, "Are you sure you don't want to come with me this morning?"

He nodded, and Natasha didn't press. Something had seemed off last night, when he'd refused, but this morning, he just seemed tired. Maybe last night had just been stress. And maybe being alone would be better for him than traveling with Thor and Loki. She didn't blame him for wanting to avoid it, really. She knew that having Loki here was one hell of a test, and there was no point in making it worse than it had to be.

So she'd leave him alone. Had to start trusting Clint at some point, right?

_Yeah, because he's really shown he's trustworthy_. _That's exactly what he's been doing for the last day._

Sighing, Natasha spent a few minutes making her way through her yogurt and toast. Clint didn't talk, instead opting to sip his coffee and glare at the cup in his hands as if it had personally offended him.

At 5:55, Natasha stood and put her dishes in the sink. Someone else—who _hadn't _gotten up at 5:15, thanks—could put them in the dishwasher later. Clint stood, too, pouring himself more coffee. "Be careful today, okay, Nat?" he cautioned her, his back turned, speaking to the coffee pot. "I don't trust Loki."

That was an understatement. "I don't, either," Natasha agreed. "But Thor's going to be there, and besides, Loki hasn't been a problem yet—"

Clint's shoulders tensed, and Natasha stopped. Instead of finishing the sentence, she explicitly stated, "I'll be careful. And I'll be back by 8:30 or so, depending on how long it takes me to wrangle the stuff Stark wants from the lab rats."

Turning to face her, Clint replied, "Okay, then—"

At that moment, Thor and Loki entered the room. Thor was donning his full battle armor, complete with Mjölnir, and Loki was, comparatively, much more casual. Hardly any metal and leather at all, Natasha noted. Like he was trying to be non-threatening.

Clint stopped mid-sentence at their appearance and, with a nod at Natasha, turned and pushed past them.

"Goodness, it's a relief to know that Thor is not the only person in residence who cannot handle the early morning," Loki observed, turning and poking his head out of the doorway to watch Clint's retreat. When Thor placed a hand on Loki's shoulder, Loki turned back around, looking innocent.

Natasha glared at him, hating the way Loki was seemingly fixated on Clint. Nothing good could come from it. Loki had already done enough damage. Resisting the urge to throw something (a knife, maybe) at Loki, she instead addressed Thor. "Are you ready to go? Have everything you'll need for a few days?" She didn't see any luggage laying around.

"I left a bag by the door," Thor answered. "Although, perhaps if someone else could attend to that later, I'd prefer to have my hands free at the moment..."

"Sure," Natasha agreed, filing it on her list of things-to-do-before-leaving-for-epic-battle. It was becoming quite the list, so she decided to delegate. "JARVIS, could I get a reminder about that?"

"Of course, Agent Romanoff," the AI agreed.

That taken care of, Natasha asked Thor, "Want to grab some breakfast before we go?"

He nodded and threw something together (sandwiches at 6:00 AM? Whatever.), making enough for both him and his brother. The two of them ate their breakfast quickly, and when they were done, Natasha gestured to her demigod entourage to lead the way out of the room. No way in hell she was letting Loki get behind her.

The ride down to the garage was quiet, as neither Natasha nor Thor were particularly inclined towards small talk, and Loki had (for the moment, at least) wised up to the fact that no one really wanted to hear what he had to say. Natasha was grateful, because the effort of not assaulting Loki was kind of exhausting.

And that was for _her_. No wonder Clint looked so worn down.

As they headed towards SHIELD, Natasha began to wonder if leaving Thor and Loki alone at the agency was a good idea. It wasn't that she didn't trust Thor. She did. It was just...the two of them were aliens. Literally. And while Thor had been in more or less steady residence in Manhattan for a couple of months, he still wasn't entirely integrated into the ways of humans. He got along decently most of the time, but some things were still kind of awkward, and maybe, just maybe, throwing the pair of them in with a helicopter full of humans wasn't the best idea.

Especially considering Loki was a _hostile _alien.

And it wasn't like her stuff wasn't _packed, _really, someone just needed to grab her bag before they left. She could call Clint and have him grab it, no problem...

But then, she'd promised she'd be back, and she had the list of things to do before the epic battle, so...

She looked over at Thor, in the passenger's seat. "Do you think you can manage SHIELD on your own?"

Thor nodded. "I have dealt with your agents before. In New Mexico, the son of Coul..." he stopped abruptly. After a moment of silence, he affirmed, "It will not be an issue, Natasha."

"Indeed," Loki agreed from the back seat. "I do believe I have never had _any_ difficulty managing SHIELD. Including Couls—"

"Do not speak so," Thor interrupted, shutting Loki down before he could finish the sentence that might have ended with Natasha physically removing him from the vehicle.

Loki's only answer was a smirk.

Natasha decided, right then, that she'd be fine leaving them on their own.

Once they got to the facility, Natasha walked them up to the helicopter landing pad and, after checking them in with Hill, headed down to the labs.

Conveying what she wanted from the biologists wasn't too difficult, and soon she had the autopsy reports on the Chitauri in hardcopy, and they'd e-mailed a copy to Tony. She arranged for him and Bruce to come by later, and although the guy in charge of the lab offered to show Natasha the preserved specimens (which _of course _SHIELD had), she declined gracefully.

That was _so _not up her alley. Killing them, sure. Poking around at them afterwards? She'd leave that to other people.

Natasha sent a quick text to Tony, telling him to come by when he was ready, and with that taken care of, she returned to the parking lot.

When she got back to the Tower, she passed Tony and Bruce on their way out. She told them, "I told Hill we're leaving at noon, so try to be back here by then."

"Sure thing, Romanoff," Tony agreed. "Anything for you."

Bruce sighed. "Don't worry, I'll make sure we get back on time."

It was a nice sentiment, but between Tony's flagrant lack of respect for punctuality, and Bruce's tendency to legitimately forget to check the time, Natasha had her doubts. She asked, "JARVIS?"

"I will send Mr. Stark a reminder, Agent Romanoff."

Bruce led Tony to the elevator as the billionaire huffed about how his whole Tower was turning against him, and Natasha went to find Steve so she had _someone _to help her with the list of things that needed to get done. He was supposed to be in charge, after all.

With the massive list of things she needed to get done, she entirely forgot to ask Clint if he'd ever called Fury to get his role in all of this straightened out.

Later, as she, Clint, and Steve were hustling out the door (and as Tony and Bruce were hustling in, just in the nick of time) when it _did _occur to her to ask, she didn't really have the time to look more deeply into his reply ("Yeah, he's cool with me working this as long as you're around.") than the very surface, than to accept what he told her.

After all...she had to start trusting him sometime.

Right?

* * *

**Sorry about the two months between updates. I will try to do better in the future. On the plus side, I'm done with classes on Tuesday and have unexpectedly found myself without summer classes to fill my time so...**

**Please review, if you're so inclined. Or if you're not. **


	9. Can I Trust You At All?

**Warnings: language, references to past drug use, angst, Loki. The usual.**

**Many thanks to my beta, irite, for beta magic.**

**I do not own The Avengers.**

* * *

As he stalked down the hallway away from Loki, doing his best to ignore the demigod's smarmy voice (he was extraordinarily pleased with himself), Clint reflected that probably, this wasn't going to work.

Avoiding Loki wasn't helping anything. If it was doing anything at all, it was probably just amusing Loki. And Clint sure as hell didn't want to be that asshole's plaything. No, he needed a better strategy. Because he couldn't expect to avoid Loki entirely while taking care of this whole problem that Loki had so graciously dumped into everyone's laps. And if couldn't avoid Loki then...maybe he could try the other end of things. Keep an eye on him.

Clint couldn't deny that it might put him at ease. Loki was a sneaky bastard. And Clint knew that Loki'd been trying to get under his skin since he showed up. So maybe watching him would help. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, right?

Right.

He'd just have to make sure he didn't let Loki get to him. He could manage that. Definitely.

Ignoring the whisper of doubt at the back of his mind, he showered and dressed before making his way back to the kitchen, hopefully now Loki-free.

Since he'd been gone, Steve and Bruce had gotten up and were milling around the kitchen, making their breakfast. A few minutes later, as Clint was procuring more coffee to go with his Lucky Charms, Tony bounded in.

He poured himself some coffee and dumped about a pound of sugar into the cup before knocking half of the resultant concoction back in one swallow. Then he turned to the other occupants of the kitchen. "Good morning, happy people."

Before any of them could reply, he went on, "And it _is _a good morning, because my AI just informed me that our resident psychopath is no longer, well, in residence. Which means that if he decides to go all supervillain again, he's not going to be breaking _my_ stuff." Tony bounced cheerily on the balls of his feet, taking another swig of coffee.

Clint didn't blame Tony for his exuberance at all. He, personally, was thrilled that Loki was gone, even if they were going to be meeting up with him again _and _protecting him from the alien assholes who (in Clint's opinion) had a very solid case for wanting Loki dead.

But then, Clint felt that most people had a very solid case for wanting Loki dead. And he was on that list, much as he resented the fact that he was now Loki's protector. Well, one of them anyway.

The four of them lingered in the kitchen, Steve talking with Tony about his plans for taking the suit with him and asking if they were going to need to transport any lab equipment, until Tony and Bruce went off to do something science-related, and Clint decided he'd better go get his gear ready.

Frankly, he was thrilled with the idea of getting out and _doing _something. Particularly with doing something about Loki. It felt like closing a book, and after the last three months or so, that was something he desperately needed to do. Maybe some closure would let him really, truly put this behind him.

And if he did, he hoped it would be worth it. He knew he was probably going to catch hell for sneaking into this like he was. He was, after all, going directly against Fury's orders. The orders that Fury gave for good reason. Clint knew intellectually that he wasn't stable enough to be doing this. He'd almost relapsed a day ago. That was on top of the shitty decision making he'd been demonstrating since Fury had kinda-sorta-not really reinstated him. This shit he was doing now, well, Clint knew that wasn't going to win him any points with the director, either. With anyone, really.

But he'd deal with that when he had to.

It was more important that he deal with Loki and all of his insanity. Then he could deal with his own issues. Priorities and all.

So he packed some clothes, throwing pants and shirts and underwear haphazardly into a bag. But then he stopped.

Because all of his weapons—minus the one gun he kept on him at almost all times—and his uniform were in his locker at SHIELD.

_Shit. Stellar planning here, Barton._

This was a serious problem. It wasn't just that he wasn't as good with a gun as he was with a bow (because he was pretty damn good with a gun, thanks), it was that he wanted his goddamn bow. If there was going to be a huge battle, he wanted to work with what he was most comfortable with. And It wasn't like he could just swing by and grab his stuff, either. That might raise some red flags if someone saw him. There was no good excuse for him to need his gear, after all. He was supposed to be recuperating, maybe doing some light field work on the Paquette case, not shooting shit.

He could ask Nat to grab it, since she was going to be there...but Clint didn't want to remind her of him any more than he had to. Didn't want her thinking about him too much, in case she started to get suspicious. It was shitty (and he knew it), but Clint knew that Nat was smart enough to see through him five seconds flat, if she was actually on point.

Plus, there was the added problem that if anyone saw her walking through headquarters with his gear...there'd be more red flags.

But if he showed up in SHIELD's country headquarters, supposedly for the 'battle' but lacking all of his gear...that wouldn't exactly be good, either. His teammates would surely question that.

Clint groaned in frustration. For a super-spy-assassin, his planning skills were absolute shit. He hoped he was just out of practice, that this would come back to him with time, but for the moment, he'd worked himself into a corner. Something that never would have happened on the job before. Ugh, he used to be so much _better _than this, and now he couldn't even figure out how to get out of _one _small snafu?

Part of him—the doubt that had been whispering in his mind all morning, in fact—knew that it wasn't just 'one small snafu.' His whole agenda was rife with holes, because he _wasn't _thinking as clearly as he once did. Couldn't. He was being impulsive, acting too fast.

Behind Clint's eyes, a ghost of a migraine started to throb and he paced in a small circle, rubbing a matching circle on his forehead just over his right eyebrow. Suddenly, he wanted to kick something, or throw something, or maybe just break something into very, very small pieces. The mood swing was sudden, but that was something he'd come to expect. Something he knew how to deal with. So, he took a deep breath and let it out slowly, stopping his pacing to sit down on the edge of his bed.

After a moment, when the throbbing in his head had quieted some, Clint resumed pondering his problem. His gear was at SHIELD. He was here. All he had with him here was one lousy handgun and—

Well. Now, that wasn't quite true, was it?

No, now that he was calmer and thinking about it, that wasn't true at all. Because he lived with Tony Stark. And Tony Stark took great pride in re-engineering every possible piece of SHIELD equipment he could get his hands on (and some that he couldn't). In fact, Clint knew for a fact that Tony had been working on new armor—back when this whole thing had started, Clint had actually stopped by to test it out. And in the last three months, hadn't Tony been talking about working on a new bow? Yeah. Because he'd been mocking Clint for preferring a weapon from the paleolithic era over something much more effective. Still, he'd made one. Had said it was ready when Clint was.

And Clint was definitely ready.

Feeling much more buoyant, Clint headed down to Tony's lab, passing Steve—who looked seriously busy—on his way. When he got there, Bruce and Tony were talking about a mile a minute at each other, gesturing wildly (well, Tony was, Bruce was a little more contained), and most of it was too fast and too science-y for Clint to register beyond the fact they were speaking. It took them a moment to notice him, but when they did, Tony waved him over. "What can we do for you, Legolas?"

Clint grimaced at the nickname. Out of all of them, 'Legolas' was probably his least favorite moniker than Tony decided to apply to him. Still, he managed a civil, "Um. Actually, I uh, was wondering if I could get that bow you were working on."

Tony's eyes lit up. Next to him, Bruce muttered, "Oh God, now you've done it, he's going to _talk_," and then Tony launched into an exuberant description of why _his _bow was nine thousand times better than anything SHIELD could ever make, and how it made complete, total sense for Clint to want to upgrade. His explanation was complete with diagrams that he pulled up out of thin air.

Clint let Tony talk for a minute (because clearly, he wasn't going to stop whether Clint wanted him to or not) before he prompted, "Tony? Bow?"

Tony stopped mid-sentence. "Oh, yeah. Geez. You're impatient, aren't you?" He wandered over to the other end of the workshop, where there were several sets of cabinets and drawers. He opened a drawer, glanced in, and shut it before moving onto another. "I can't remember if I put it under 'B' for 'Barton,' or 'H' for 'Hawkeye,' or 'K' for 'Katniss,' or 'S' for 'Shit I do better than SHIELD." He opened another drawer and reached in, pulling out a bow case. "'H' for 'Hawkeye,' I guess."

Clint watched him as he rifled through the cabinets, until he pulled out the quiver that went with the bow. And then he listened patiently to the instructions delivered at eight thousand words per minute. When Tony finally wound down (and Clint figured he had a pretty good idea how to work the damn thing—he had been doing so for decades, after all), Clint prompted him, "What about body armor?"

Which of course got Tony started all over again.

Finally, though, Clint managed to escape from the lab, outfitted with new, lightweight, high-tech gear that, he'd been soundly reassured, was way better than anything he'd ever used before. He wasn't exactly convinced of that, but he figured as long as everything worked, he'd be okay.

Still, he took the new bow down to the weapons range to try it out before they left. It was lighter than what he'd been using, and the arrowhead changing mechanism was a lot smoother. He could carry more arrows now, too, which was a major plus.

When he got back upstairs, Tony and Bruce were gone and Natasha was back, and she and Steve were running around frantically, trying to get everything ready to go. Clint slipped past them into his room (he was still trying to stay away from Nat's notice, and she had Steve as her peon and didn't need him) and threw his new gear into his luggage.

He still didn't have much in terms of firepower, but guns were easy enough to procure. SHIELD had an armory at their base, but if you wanted something a little more specialized, you had to bring it yourself.

And a bow was kind of specialized, at least in the twenty-first century.

Later, as they were all heading out the door (just moments after Tony and Bruce returned from SHIELD), Natasha finally asked him if he'd checked in with Fury. She was frazzled, though, and took his affirmative as the truth, obviously not thinking too hard about it. Which was good. There were quite a few elements that didn't add up here, and if she was willing to overlook them, that was fine with him.

Of course, busy as she was, she was still Natasha, and thus keenly observant even while hassled.

They were on the highway (Tony driving; he'd insisted, since it was his car...well, minivan. Natasha had set the GPS), heading off into the boonies when Natasha asked, "Clint, where'd you get that bow? The one you put in the trunk? You haven't been to SHIELD."

"It's new," Tony piped up from the front of the van. "I redesigned it."

"Didn't really have time to run to SHIELD this morning, Nat," Clint added evenly.

Natasha looked over at Clint, narrowing her eyes. "I was at SHIELD. I would have grabbed your stuff. I mean, do you even have your uniform?"

"Yeah, kinda. Tony—"

"Redesigned that, too, Romanoff."

Natasha did not look placated, so Clint said, "Look, I didn't want to bother you, with everything else you had going on. I figured Tony had some stuff I could use, so it'd be okay. Really."

"You wouldn't have been bothering me," Natasha stated flatly, but then she sighed, closing her eyes. "This let's-move-Loki-out-of-the-city thing was too sudden and too much work. Whatever. As long as you've got something."

Beside her, Steve nodded in agreement, still looking harried from his busy morning.

Clint breathed a small, internal sigh of relief. That was one hurdle out of the way. Of course, it was a fairly minuscule hurdle in the greater scheme of things. A far more pressing matter was the question of what was he going to do if he got to SHIELD's base and Hill knew he wasn't supposed to be there.

He had a couple of hours to think about it, at least.

Except...he didn't. Because about forty-five minutes into the drive, the conversation wound down and the van was silent except for the radio Tony was playing at a (for once) reasonable volume (Bruce insisted). That, combined with the immensely soothing rhythm of the tires under the van, meant that Clint's sleepless night caught up with him.

He dozed off.

And was awakened when the van stopped moving and Nat shook his shoulder roughly. "Come on, Sleeping Beauty. We're here."

_Shit. So much for having a strategy planned out. Great time for a nap, Barton, Jesus._

Clint cracked his eyes open and glanced over at Natasha, who was smirking at him. She said, "You sleep with your mouth open."

Tony twisted around to face them, unbuckling his seat belt. "Everyone who sleeps sitting up does it with their mouth open. Gravity and all. But uh, nice molars, Barton."

Steve, who'd been mostly quiet for their little journey, made a distinctly disapproving noise. Clint was less refined; he just flipped Tony off. Honestly, trying to deal with Tony Stark immediately after having woken up? That bordered on cruel and unusual.

Natasha unbuckled her seatbelt and opened her door, so everyone else followed suit. Clint looked around cautiously, but they were currently in an underground parking garage, so there wasn't really anyone around. Still, he resolved to keep an eye open. Avoidance was probably his best strategy. And really, avoiding Hill wouldn't seem too strange to anyone who knew him. Hell, he had a knack for dodging authority figures.

If all else failed, he could chill out in the air ducts for a couple of days if he had to.

He grabbed his gear from the trunk, as did everyone else, and they made their way towards the elevator. Clint had been to this base once or twice before, so it wasn't like it was completely foreign. He knew where their quarters were, knew where to find central command, knew where they were probably going to keep Loki, so he figured he'd be able to navigate pretty easily and keep a low profile.

"So, uh, where are we going, exactly?" Steve asked once they were on the elevator, suddenly all business.

"We'll grab some rooms first," Natasha answered. "Drop our stuff off. Then you and I at least should go down to command and see what needs to be done. We should make sure Loki's contained, and Thor would probably like to get away from his brother, so we're going to need to set up a detail for that. Then we have to start planning for a battle...or trying to figure out if we're having one at all." She looked at Bruce and Tony. "There's a lab. Don't know what kind of setup they have, but you can work down there if you need to."

Tony nodded. "Yeah, we have a couple of leads we want to explore with the Chitauri."

Before he could start rambling about what those leads were, though, the doors to the elevator opened and they all stepped off onto the housing floor. It wasn't hard to find some rooms that were unoccupied (most of them weren't), so everyone tossed their stuff in and set entry codes for the doors.

Once he'd finished getting everything arranged to his liking, Clint sent Nat a text message. It said, 'Going to see what's up with Loki.'

Which was honest. He _was _going to go see what was up with Loki.

Really, he was.

And he was going to keep his cool, stay calm. Wasn't going to let anything happen. He could handle this.

His sudden faith in himself felt somewhat out of place, given the situation, but Clint was bound and determined to see this through.

He adjusted the gun holstered at his back before opening the door and making his way down the hall, mindful of anyone who might question his presence here.

There was no one, though, and so Clint made it down to the detainment cells with no problems.

* * *

'Going to see what's up with Loki,' said the text message.

Natasha narrowed her eyes at it in lieu of being able to shoot the sender a dirty look. Something about this didn't seem right. Clint had been avoiding Loki, something she thought they'd all agreed was the best strategy. So why was he now running off to play babysitter?

It didn't make sense. Especially since he was supposed to stick with her. Hadn't that been Fury's condition? That Clint could come along for the mission, as long as he stayed with her?

_So why's he going off on his own?_

_And to deal with _Loki?

It just...didn't make sense. It wasn't like him to be so...impulsive. He was a sniper, for God's sake. Practically a physical embodiment of patience. He didn't just start making his own plans and running with them; that was the sort of shit she expected from Stark.

But then Natasha reconsidered. And realized...it _hadn't _been like Clint to be so impulsive. Before. But now? Now, yeah, it fit. It was something she had to remember, now that he was back in the field. He'd changed.

Did he know that, though?

Natasha shoved her phone back in her pocket. She was _really _curious to get a look at the ass-backwards reasoning that Clint was working with, because she was sure it was _fascinating. _On top of that, she was beginning to suspect that _something _was going on here. But she didn't like what she was starting to suspect. Because what she was starting to suspect was that Clint was lying to her. That he _wasn't _supposed to be here at all.

That he was idiotically impulsive enough to think that _sneaking into an op _was a good idea.

Natasha knew that she could figure out if Clint was meant to be here easily enough on her own. She had a phone. It'd just take a single phone call.

But...it wasn't something that she wanted to do.

No. She wanted him to tell her the truth. On his own.

_You really think that's going to happen_?

At the moment? She didn't know. But what she did know was that going behind his back wasn't going to help with the fact that he apparently didn't trust _her_. And it wasn't going to help with the fact that she couldn't trust him, either.

Natasha didn't know what _would _help. It wasn't her area of expertise. She was a spy, for God's sake, not a damn babysitter. What was she supposed to do, when her friend did something so impressively stupid that she couldn't even figure out what the hell he was thinking?

She didn't know.

But there was a lot that _needed _to be done, and that stuff, she could do.

So, with a huge sigh, Natasha decided that she'd grab Steve and go check in with Hill and see what she could do to help to get the base up and running.

And maybe she wouldn't mention that Clint was there. She sure as hell wasn't going to cover for him, but...if it didn't come up, it didn't come up.

As it turned out, it didn't come up. Because Hill was just as frazzled as Natasha had been that morning, and Natasha didn't blame her at all. She'd been sent off into the middle of nowhere to oversee a very likely alien invasion, had to deal with Loki, and now she had Tony Stark in her base, too. God knows that combination was a lot to deal with.

So, within ten minutes, Hill had Steve going over the building's defenses. She sent Natasha down to check in with Thor and Loki, and told her to have Tony and Bruce let her know what they were working on ASAP.

Natasha sent them a quick message asking that they contact Hill before heading down to the detainment area.

As she walked, she stewed, trying to think of what she was going to say to Clint when she saw him. She didn't want to come off as accusatory. But. She had some accusing that she needed to do. Now that she was thinking about it, she was angry. Damn him for putting her in this position, who the hell did he think he was? Did he think she just existed to clean up his messes? That she relished the opportunity to stress out about whatever the hell it was he thought he was doing?

But then she sighed. Because he _wasn't _thinking, not really, and that was the issue. It wasn't like he was intentionally trying to get her stuck between a rock and a hard place. His _idiocy _just did it, anyway, despite whatever he might actually be aiming for.

And really...she should have caught this before. As much as she _wanted _to trust him, she'd felt uneasy about it. She should have trusted _herself_.

Still, the anger lingered, and so it was with more force than was probably necessary that she threw the door to the detainment area open.

It was immediately obvious that she'd interrupted something. Thor was standing in front of Loki, who was handcuffed to his brother but otherwise unrestrained. Clint was standing in front of Thor, posture rigid, teeth practically bared in a snarl at the pair of demigods. Thor looked defensive, Clint looked furious and Loki, well, Loki was smirking.

None of this boded well.

When she entered, Clint whipped around to face her, his expression going more or less blank. To someone who didn't know him well, he might have even seemed calm. But Natasha _did _know him well, and on top of that, he hadn't been quite quick enough to hide his reaction.

Besides, Thor and Loki didn't make any attempt to hide theirs, so it was clear something was up.

But what?

Closing the door firmly behind her, Natasha approached the three of them. "What's going on?" She already had an idea, but it was always good to get the facts.

Loki drawled, edging around Thor, "Barton is a bit touchy, Romanoff. You really ought to get him checked out; he may be...defective."

"Quiet, brother," Thor growled, giving the wrist attached to Loki's a sharp jerk.

Loki, as he was apt to do, ignored Thor completely. "We three were just having a discussion regarding the 'changing of the guard' as it were. My brother is fatigued of my company, no doubt, but I'd prefer if I was not left alone with Barton." Loki lowered his voice and whispered conspiratorially to Natasha, "He did try to kill me, you know."

Natasha did not generally condone using alcohol as a coping mechanism, but she was starting to consider making an exception to that stance. A drink was starting to sound really good right now. To Loki, Natasha spat a terse, "Shut up." To Thor, she said, "You need to keep a handle on your brother." Maybe it wasn't fair, burdening Thor with that responsibility, but short of Bruce's alter ego, there was no one around who could keep him in check.

Then, to Clint, she barked, "I need to have a word with you." She jerked her head towards the door. "In private."

Looking very much like he knew he was in trouble, Clint obediently crossed the room and exited into the hallway. Natasha was right behind him, ignoring Loki's dark chuckle that followed them from the room.

As soon as the door shut behind her, she said (in what she hoped was a calm tone of voice), "What the hell are you doing down here?" He'd been avoiding Loki before, and that had been working out well enough, so why go seek him out? She didn't get it.

He clenched his jaw, grinding his teeth together. "I don't trust Loki."

"None of us do," Natasha countered. "He wants to get under your skin. You're just going to let him?"

"No. Nat, I just." He looked down. "He's getting under my skin, whether I let him or not."

"So you figured, 'Hey, I might as well give him an open invitation?' Make it easy for him?""

More defensive now, he exclaimed, "No! I thought I could handle it—"

"Yeah, I saw you were really 'handling' it, too," Natasha interrupted, her anger and irritation with him spilling over into her words. She paused and took a deep breath, willing herself back into calmness. "I expected better from you. I expected you to, I don't know, _think_."

Clint tried to explain himself again. "Look. I just thought that if I kept an eye on Loki, I might feel better. I don't like...I feel like he's planning something, and I don't want to give him a chance to get one over on us."

"You think Thor's going to give him a chance to do something? Or I am? Or Stark, or Banner, or Rogers? Clint, you need to trust us." This was it, really, the crux of the issue. Of course she knew he had issues in this department, but hadn't counted on it coming out to haunt them right _now_.

Clint bit his lower lip. "I wasn't...I didn't think of it like that."

Oh, Natasha knew that already, but it was good to hear. "No, you didn't." Then, feeling like this was as good a time as any (because there was no good time for this, but it had to be done), she asked, "Clint, are you even supposed to be here at all? Honestly?" She tried not to sound angry, to let on how pissed off she was that he might have lied to her.

She thought she was mostly successful, but was apparently mistaken, given the way he bristled. "What do you mean?"

"Did you actually get clearance from Fury to come here, or did you lie to me?"

Clint shrugged stiffly, looking down. "Does it matter? I'm here now."

Natasha used most of her self-restraint to refrain from kicking him in the head. It left very little capability for speech, so when it became apparent that she wasn't going to say anything, Clint attempted an apology. "I'm sorry—"

It was probably a smart move on his part, but Natasha didn't really want to hear it. "What the hell were you thinking! You can't just—did you really think no one was going to notice? Christ, Clint, do you know how much trouble you can get in? Disobeying orders? You could be fired. Oh, yeah. And you lied to me, you asshole, what the hell?" She paused for a breath, and Clint tried to apologize again.

"Nat, I just thought—"

Natasha wasn't done yet. "No. You. Didn't." She leveled him with a glare. "You need to get this straightened out. I'm not going to cover for you." Fury might have assigned her to 'asset retention,' but as far as Natasha was concerned, that didn't involve helping with Clint's bad plans. Hell, doing so could get _her _fired as well as him. Besides, Clint seemed to think he could just lie to her, so he could deal with the damn consequences himself.

Clint sighed. "Fine. I just...I will. But—"

"No buts." Natasha glared at him. "Can I trust you at all?"

"_Yes, _geez, Nat, it was just _one _lie."

Their relationship had always been characterized by, at times, brutal honesty. There was only one thing he'd ever really lied about—his drug use—and even that had been lying by omission and not outright fabrication. So this 'one lie' really didn't sit well with her. Neither did his abrupt dismissal of it. So she shook her head. "I don't know if I can. If you don't get this whole thing handled, then I will."

She wasn't going to endorse his bad decision making skills. And maybe she wasn't his goddamn mother, and maybe she really needed to let him be an adult and make his own mistakes, but as pissed off as she was, she wasn't going to let him put himself in a potentially dangerous situation that he was in no way equipped to handle. Not to mention the danger his impulsive, stupid, idiocy posed to the rest of the mission.

Clint thought he knew what he needed to do, thought he needed to personally see to Loki's eviction from the planet, but Natasha didn't think that was the right route to take. Really, she thought that it was about the worst possible thing he could do. Why didn't he think that, too?

Clint was glaring at her, now (which Natasha felt maybe, _maybe_, she deserved; that had been a shitty thing to say, even if it was true), so she tried to soften it some by saying, "Look. We're going to take care of this. You can trust us. And then you'll never see Loki again."

"I guess." He didn't sound happy, and it didn't sound as if he was brimming over with trust, either, but he nodded once and added, "I'll talk to Hill."

It was probably about the best Natasha knew she could expect. "Right now?"

Clint looked at his watch. "I...guess."

Natasha sighed. "Okay. I need to talk to Thor, and I'm probably going to end up watching Loki for a while. So I need to trust you." She met Clint's eyes. "Can I?"

He had the decency to look abashed. "Yeah, Nat. Look. I'm sorry. It was stupid, but I wanted to do this. Thought it might help."

Natasha shook her head. "Clint, being around Loki...that's never going to be good for you. Never."

And that was more true than she knew, even then.

* * *

**Thanks for reading!**


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